No Entry Without Waiver
by 4ofCups
Summary: Once you sign the entrance waiver to this provocative haunted house, anything goes. Anything. Chambers of Doom promised Gotham an "interactive" experience for extreme Halloween frights, but the most terrifying element wasn't one of the chamber monsters: it was the sixth guest who entered with an unsuspecting group of visitors. Based on Ledger's Joker
1. Part 1

For chronological clarity, this story his takes place about one year after The Dark Knight, nine months after "Right Foot Red", about six months after the Joker has escaped from Arkham, and two weeks before "Not Playing with a Full Deck". Thank you for reading, and Happy Halloween!

* * *

 ***** **NO ENTRY WITHOUT WAIVER** *****

 **Part 1**

 **. . . . . . .**

As the night chill settled in, the queue lengthened and people grew restless. The cheap illuminated sign that was propped up haphazardly on the two-story building's roof buzzed in a low hum, casting an unnatural green neon glow on the faces below. It was only the third night of active business for Chambers of Doom, yet already the second letter "o" in the word "Doom" had burned out in the sign. Halloween was more than two weeks away, but the haunted house industry was in full swing across the country, already catering to those who were looking for a discounted admission price for early season entry, or to those who were looking for an early fear fix.

Others drawn to the spectacle were looking for something else entirely.

* * *

 _This was a bad idea._

Like a broken record, the thought kept playing over and over in his mind. _This was a bad idea._ The sheltered nineteen-year-old had heard the speculation about this haunted house's intensity, and it was that very speculation that incited so many people to attend. There was no reliable information anywhere on the Internet about what to expect, and the thrill of the unknown had guests showing up in throngs. Rumor had it that a waiver was required for entry. Allegedly, signing the waiver gave the workers the right to manhandle the guests. _What if it's true? What if they can actually touch us?_ It was that very possibility that pushed the college student to brave the Chambers of Doom experience. The idea of being touched without warning thrilled him.

The idea also terrified him. It all depended on who was doing the touching.

 _What if they do more than just touch us? I shouldn't have come. This was a bad idea._ He had arrived early, to get the experience over with as quickly as possible. There were only about two dozen people ahead of him in line, but hundreds were lined up behind him already. There would be no way for him to gauge by guests' reactions when they left Chambers of Doom just how bad it was inside, because he was too near the front of the line. He realized that others would be gauging how bad it was by how _he_ appeared when it was over.

He looked around apprehensively at the crowd of drunkards, ruffians and thrill seekers behind him. About half of them were university students; the other half were jaded adults who were looking for a fun dare that was outside their comfort zone. Broken glass and cigarette butts littered the parking lot of the dilapidated strip mall. He had never felt more out of his element in his life.

As if reading his mind, the sizeable fellow university student ahead of him in line turned around, bent forward and clapped a meaty hand firmly down on his shoulder. "Hey, Elway, you finally gonna get some action tonight?"

Elway stiffened, as three other lacrosse players turned around in line to stare at their team captain's target of ridicule. He didn't make eye contact with the onlookers, but he could feel their eyes appraise him coldly. He forced a calm veneer and defaulted to a defense of self-debasing humor. "Well, you know, _eventually_ I'm going to have to get lucky."

Troy's eyes narrowed as his smile grew. He squeezed the smaller man's shoulder firmly enough to bruise it. "Atta boy, El. That's the spirit!" Condescension clung to each word, as thick as the stench of beer on his breath.

Years of honing self-deprecating comebacks served Elway well. He shrugged. "If the rumors are true, and all of us are getting grabbed at some point in the tour, I figure that even _I_ have a good chance of getting an accidental hand job by the end of the night, right?"

Genuine laughter erupted from the other lacrosse players, while Troy merely snickered. He wasn't used to someone dodging his intimidations so deftly. He also didn't like that the rejoinder elicited more laughter from his friends than his initial attack had. But Troy had a retort of his own. Alcohol may have slowed his response time, but not his ability to craft a cruel remark. "You haven't had a hand job yet? I thought your cousins would have practiced on you before they're allowed to work at the family massage parlor."

And there it was. Elway suspected some form of racist remark was imminent, but even he hadn't seen that one coming.

Two of the other players exchanged looks, one emitting a crescendo of "Oooh!" before they both turned around to face forward in line. The third player looked at Troy and motioned to Elway. "His family owns a massage parlor?"

Troy stood up to his full six-foot-two inch height, as he ran a hand through mussed brown hair. "Sure. I mean, if _his_ family doesn't, then one of his _cousins_ must." He paused to let the insinuation sink in. "Right, Elway? That's the national business where you come from."

Elway fumed internally, but kept his voice even. "I am not Thai. I'm Korean American."

Troy shrugged. "What's the difference? Just another ching chong country, if you ask me." Then he looked Elway up and down. "I'm surprised your name isn't 'Ching' or 'Chong'." He took a swig of beer from the bottle in his hand. "The name 'Elway' sure doesn't sound Korean to me." He turned back to his cohorts, whose attention had already shifted to seek out another target for derision. After finishing off the drink, Troy threw the bottle across the parking lot, cheering as it shattered.

Elway fought back tears of indignant rage, as he struggled with his own internal dialogue. _Don't you dare let them see you cry. Troy is an asshole. Remember why you came. You are GOING to do this!_ He slowly exhaled as he warily watched the back of his tormentor, half-expecting Troy to turn around and start up on him again. _Don't give that guy the satisfaction of seeing you leave._ Caucasian, privileged athletes had been the bane of Elway's existence all through school, as they were for all other smaller East Asian male students he knew. Bullying often involved snide remarks about their height, or the outright mocking of their names and perpetuating racist stereotypes of the Chinese, regardless of what the heritage actually was of the person being bullied.

His parents were first generation Koreans, who had moved to Gotham a few years before his birth. Elway was born right when Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway was in his heyday professionally. Meaning well, his parents thought that naming their son after a venerated American sports hero would help root him firmly in the culture, and smooth the road ahead of him so he would be accepted socially as a true American. On the contrary, the name made him even more of a target for bullying throughout his school years. When Elway's height topped out at five-foot-five, a good ten inches shorter than his namesake, the irony of his parents' name selection became all the more pronounced.

He was never big enough to fight back physically when ridiculed, so through the years he'd learned to use humor to diffuse attacks. His limited group of friends was comprised of geeks and social misfits, who were just as marginalized as he was. Their bond was predicated on the shared experience of victimhood. They had sanctuary only with each other.

 _I could have stayed inside tonight and been safe with my friends._ He knew that at this very moment, his friends were all in the recreation room of their on-campus dormitory, eating cold pizza and debating the realism of the latest "House" episode's mystery illness. Maybe even debating the merits of alternate universe versions of Star Wars fan fics they'd read online. That's where Elway _could_ have been.

But Elway _wasn't_ there. He had made the choice to come to what was rumored to be the most cutting-edge haunted house experience in the entire city of Gotham, forcing him to face a host of his anxieties. He didn't like crowds, he didn't like loud noises, and he didn't like the entire horror genre. In particular, he was extremely uneasy about the pervasive rumor that all participants had to sign a waiver just for the privilege of being terrorized inside of a haunted house. Yet, here he was, because the only thing stronger than his aversion to being terrified was his fascination with Jasmine.

* * *

Like Elway, Jasmine was a sophomore at Gotham University. Six weeks earlier at the start of the semester, Elway had sought refuge from a migraine headache in the darkness of the university's theater balcony, a haven he had discovered in his freshman year. Unexpectedly, a drama class entered the theater down below, gathered in a circle on the stage, and made their first day of class introductions to the group. The acoustics of the theater carried the voices effectively right up to the balcony, though his presence was obscured from the students and professor. While uncomfortable with his own voyeurism, before he could sneak out, a female student on stage caught his attention and kept him rooted in his seat.

The student introduced herself as Jasmine Rivas. As pretty as she was, Elway was even more taken in by her personality. She shared with the group that she had chosen Gotham University to escape a limited future in south Florida, wanting to pursue acting and a career in the film industry. She was magnetic: self-assured and loud, friendly and optimistic. Decidedly extroverted. She was everything that Elway was not, which fascinated him. She shared with the group that she'd successfully auditioned to be a "player" in a new haunted house that was going to open near the university campus in mid-October. The rehearsals were already underway, and the management encouraged method acting, highly improvised and emotional. "Trust me," she had told the group, "as a woman of Cubano heritage, I can definitely do emotional!" The group laughed along with her. And with that, Elway was smitten.

Elway was far too shy to approach Jasmine to talk to her, and they had no classes together. Essentially, no common interests, the challenge of which wasn't lost on him. The only time he could see her, aside from an occasional chance passing in the campus bookstore, was to spy on her drama class from the theater balcony twice weekly. He knew how creepy that would seem if she ever found out about it. He also was ashamed of himself for what he felt could be categorized as stalking, but the compulsion to watch her kept him coming back. He figured that as long as he played it safe, no one would ever find out. As far as Elway knew, no one had ever been in the balcony to witness him watching the drama class surreptitiously.

As far as he knew.

* * *

Elway wondered what Jasmine's costume would look like. Would she be a zombie with rotting flesh? Would she be some unwitting, scantily clad damsel in distress on display for the visitors? He hoped it was the latter. Whatever she was wearing, if there were any chance that she could touch him… he nearly shuddered in anticipation. It didn't matter if it were just a shove. He would settle for a slap. He just craved… something. He needed her to be a part of his experience.

He looked down at his watch impatiently, then up at the defective sign on top of the building. The man behind him in line was looking at it, too, and pronounced the name phonetically aloud: "Chambers of Dom." Elway chuckled when he heard it, because it did sound funny. The man continued. "Dom. Dommmmm. Dom dom. Dom dee dom. Ha."

Elway didn't know if he should respond to the man or not. He chose to continue to look straight ahead. The man behind him kept his gloved hands inside of his sweatshirt pocket, hood draped loosely over his head. Some stringy hair was visible, should anyone be looking closely. No one would have wanted to get too close, given his aggressive posture.

If they had, they would have assumed the green tinge to the blonde hair was simply the result of the overhead green neon sign's castoff light.

* * *

Economic hardship, not holiday levity, gave rise to Chambers of Doom.

Struggling retail businesses in an economically challenged section of Gotham had been in the red all year, and by mid-summer they desperately needed to make extra seasonal cash to tide them over to the critical Christmas holiday shopping season. Taking a calculated risk based on Gotham's historic appetite for the macabre, the business owners pooled their resources to create the Chambers of Doom haunted house. A bankrupt strip mall neighboring the north side of Gotham University's city campus was an ideal location: minimal construction was needed to build the set itself, as the existing building provided the skeletal structure; more fortunate yet was that the supply of labor was cheap and close by. As anticipated, university students lined up both for construction jobs and to work as employees of the haunted house itself. Between cash-starved college kids and an abundance of jobless urban dwellers, there was more than an ample selection of potential employees.

City council in-fighting resulted in nebulous city zoning codes, allowing the haunted house owners to cut corners with their new endeavor. The conversion of existing commercial property for entertainment purposes proceeded without mandatory safety checks of the new construction, nor were there health code compliance inspections. There also was neither time nor money available for background checks on the job applicants, as there rarely was for seasonal employment. Time was of the essence to get the haunted house up and running by the middle of October. All parties involved were too focused on getting the jump on fellow industry competitors by being the first location to promote – and successfully deliver – a more cutting edge type of haunted house experience.

An _interactive_ experience.

Rather than having guests walk a pre-mapped route through a building, with the perfunctory scares charted out ahead of time, each participant determined where they would go… based on their reaction to the Chambers of Doom employees, or players, as they were known. No two guest experiences would ever be alike. The players were given near free reign (within reason, of course) to deliver a more terrifying experience to the guests. Touching of the guests was allowed. In fact, it was encouraged. Moreover, so was pushing, grabbing, and even slapping. Light hair pulling was permitted. So was licking. Players could shout at the guests. Obscenities, if they so chose, though the managers knew better than to stipulate any list of sanctioned abuse in writing.

Any guest who was too squeamish to endure the interaction was given the option to stop the experience immediately, resulting in an escort out of Chambers of Doom. All a guest had to do was to say the "safe word", which all players were trained to recognize and immediately respect. The idea of a safe word came from the eldest business manager, who was purported to be a regular of a sex club called Flesh For Fantasy. His sessions with Mistress Femke rarely made it the full sixty minutes he paid for, thanks to the safe word ending his pain.

All of the regular rules could be bent and even broken. All of it was possible, thanks to the requirement that guests must sign a waiver.

It was a clever marketing ruse to leak the rumor of a waiver ahead of time: gossip and natural curiosity took care of the rest, and word of Chambers of Doom spread quickly. It was on the down low, of course, that was the understanding. No overt commercial advertising. The owners didn't need any unnecessary attention from rogue do-gooder inspectors sniffing around and shutting the whole place down on safety violations. They also knew that its reputation for danger would grow, as more people heard of it in whispers and chat rooms. To that end, Chambers of Doom's website was fairly bare bones by design. There was no copy of the waiver uploaded for pre-printing. The absence of a document preview helped perpetuate both the mystery and the perceived danger.

Of course, not all of the danger was merely perceived. Some of it was quite real.

* * *

A loud hissing noise unexpectedly shot out from the front of the building, as smoke machines kicked in. Ghoulish laughter pumped out of oversized speakers, overlapping with pre-recorded shrieks. The crowd started to cheer and clap in anticipation of Chambers of Doom opening for business for the night. Four employees wearing street clothes brought out two chairs, a folding table and a stack of papers. A large, bald man in his mid-fifties with a long, full beard pulled out a bullhorn and addressed the crowd. A former semi-pro wrestler, he made his living calling wrestling matches on one of Gotham's lesser-watched cable TV stations. Years of working crowds led him to pace and punctuate his speech with dramatic intention. "Okay FOLKS, we're about to get this show STARTED! My name is MORRIS, and I will be the RINGLEADER of this outdoor circus. Line up SINGLE-file… ONE line only, please – ONE line ONLY."

Excited murmurs rippled through the crowd. Elway felt his heart rate accelerate as the people shuffled inward toward the building. He hoped he would spot Jasmine inside. Unless she were wearing a mask, he figured that he'd be able to tell which player she was, regardless of how much make up she had on. He didn't know what to say to her, or if he even _could_ say anything to her. He just wanted to see her, and take a chance on physical contact. It was the thrill of anticipation that propelled him forward.

Morris continued his directions: "This is NOT going to be like OTHER haunted houses you've BEEN to! CHAMBERS OF DOOM has a UNIQUE formula that NO other house HAS. Here's how it WORKS, people: every GROUP that enters will have SIX people, and EXACTLY six people. LARGER groups will be broken UP. SMALLER groups will be COMBINED."

Disappointed cries erupted in various sections of the line, as assemblies of students realized they'd end up separated from each other. As if anticipating the protest, Morris put the bullhorn back up to his lips.

"SIX people to a group." He then spoke slowly to drive his message home, making a pointing gesture up toward the sky, to punctuate each successive clarification. "NO more!"

He paused and glared at the masses, pointing upward again. "NO less!"

Then he pointed out to the crowd. "And NO EXCEPTIONS!"

Random groups began chattering as they decided how to break themselves up, and bodies started shuffling around in line. The former wrestler continued his directions, motioning to the table next to him. "As you step FORWARD, you'll take a WAIVER form. You will then SIGN your waiver AT the TABLE, where it will be COLLECTED along with your ADMISSION TICKET."

Whispers undulated like waves through the crowd at the mention of the word "waiver", as speculation grew.

Morris continued with his directions. "There are some WARNINGS you will read on the waiver. I will go over those warnings NOW, so you don't waste your time waiting in LINE if you cannot HANDLE them. EVERYONE must SIGN the waiver. Otherwise NO entry is ALLOWED! I repeat: NO! ENTRY! WITHOUT! WAIVER!"

Elway didn't like the ominous sound of this. The man behind him mumbled, "C'mon, this is just a marketing ploy to hype the place up." Elway felt a little better after he heard that. _Yeah. A marketing ploy. It can't be that dangerous, or they wouldn't be allowed to operate._

Morris held up fingers as he counted out the warnings. "Warning number ONE: if you are PREGNANT, we recommend that you do NOT go through Chambers of DOOM! Warning number TWO: if you have a HEART CONDITION, we recommend that you do NOT go through Chambers of DOOM! Warning number THREE: if you are physically DISABLED or cannot RUN, we recommend that you do NOT go through Chambers of DOOM! And warning number FOUR: if you cannot SCREAM or SHOUT LOUDLY, we recommend that you do NOT go through Chambers of DOOM! All of these WARNINGS are stated clearly on the WAIVER."

Elway stiffened. _We need to be able to run and shout? Why is that necessary?_

Troy waived his hand and shouted at the announcer. "Hey! Why don't you hand those papers out, so we can sign them ahead of time? It will make it go faster!" Concurring shouts of "Yeah!" popped up sporadically.

Morris lowered the bullhorn and walked down the line toward Troy, stopping in front of him, meeting him eye to eye. What he had to say clearly wasn't meant for broadcast. "Look, kid. That's the way it works. Each waiver needs to be signed in front of an employee as a witness. It's a legal thing. Just suck it up and do it, then you can go inside."

As he turned his back to move forward, Troy went for the laugh with his friends. In a lowered tone he said, "Why don't you suck this?" He grabbed his crotch and wagged it. His friends tried to muffle their laughter, but weren't successful.

Suddenly Morris spun on a dime, reached out a heavily tattooed arm and grabbed Troy by his collar, yanking him out of line and slamming him to the ground. "What did you say to me you little FAGGOT?"

Everyone in line gasped collectively and went silent. Elway felt a wave of emotional vindication at seeing his bully now the victim, but he was still shocked by the barbaric show of force. The man behind him in line broke the silence with a single cackle.

Troy's eyes were wide as he quickly realized the man looming over him was his physical superior. "Look man, I was just kidd—"

"No, YOU look you little SHIT stain!" Morris bent down to make sure Troy was fully focused on his words. "You don't like getting grabbed? Well then, you're too much of a PUSSY to go into Chambers of Doom! You're GONNA get grabbed in there, boy. You hear me? You're gonna get GRABBED, and you're gonna get SHOVED, and you might even get SPIT on!"

A small woman's high-pitched voice in the crowd asked timidly, "They can spit on us in there?" She didn't wait for an answer, quickly stepping out of line and walking toward the street. Four other women followed her, along with a married couple who realized this was more than they had bargained for.

The announcer continued his tirade in Troy's face. "THAT is what the waiver is for, you uppity little PRICK! It says that you ACKNOWLEDGE that it's going to be a terrifying EXPERIENCE, because it's INTERACTIVE! Our players don't just act FOR the guests, they act WITH the guests. Now, are you gonna man-up and sign the waiver, or are you gonna run AWAY like a little BITCH?" He roughly released Troy's collar and stood up, but extended a hand to help Troy to his feet.

Troy swallowed, humiliated that everyone was looking at him. "No, I'm not leaving." He grabbed Morris' hand, who pulled him up to his feet in one swift yank.

As Troy brushed himself off, the announcer brought the bullhorn back up to his mouth to address the crowd. "When you sign the WAIVER, you will see that there is a SAFE word mentioned. If you YELL that safe word, we will STOP whatever is happening to you and we will ESCORT you OUT. You do NOT get to complete the tour!"

Right on cue, one of the female employees at the table made a dramatic show by shouting over to him. "Hey, Morris! What's the safe word tonight?"

Morris took a dramatic pause as he locked eyes with Troy, tilting his head back so the projected bullhorn's sound would reach everyone. "The SAFE word of the night is 'BITCH'!"

That was met with whoops of laughter and cheering throughout the crowd. Morris dropped the bullhorn down at his side, and clamped a hand on Troy's shoulder, just as Troy had done to Elway. Elway instantly recognized the parallels of karma. Morris winked at Troy. "You have a good time in there, boy. We'll make sure you get extra special treatment."

As Morris walked away, Troy stood frozen. If he backed out of line now, he wouldn't live it down and it would be all over campus that he'd chickened out. He had to go through with it. Elway felt a palpable satisfaction at watching Troy's embarrassment. Clearly, he had pissed off the wrong guy, and the haunted house players would be dishing out something special for him. As the line inched closer to the front table, players dressed as ghouls and maniacs ran through the crowd, randomly grabbing people, screaming in their faces or shouting obscenities at them.

When Morris was back up at the table, he assessed the crowd's reaction to being harassed before even stepping inside the building. "You need to THINK about this, GOTHAM! Whatever you're AFRAID of might be WAITING for you INSIDE!"

The man in line behind Elway scoffed. "Try meeeeeeeeee."

The sound of the voice made the hair on Elway's neck stand on end. He didn't dare look back, as he didn't want to seem confrontational.

Elway couldn't wait for the experience to be over.

* * *

Steven Curtis couldn't wait for the experience to start.

Getting to dress up as a player at a no holds barred haunted house was the best thing that had come his way in years. The pay wasn't the best, but he could live with that. It was the potential opportunities for mayhem that thrilled him. While he was exposed to danger occasionally while in the Joker's employ as a henchman, this gig promised a steady source of fun that was less hit-or-miss.

There had been no background checks, no contingencies that otherwise would have barred him from employment, as was the case with legitimate businesses. Therefore, no one knew of his multiple convictions for aggravated assault and rape.

Once he put his costume on, he would be invincible.

Curtis was being handed carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to terrorize people. He would be wearing a mask – legally, as required for his job. He couldn't help but laugh at the irony. He was a career criminal, and now he had a job where he was being paid to hide his identity. He was _expected_ to hide his identity, while engaging in activities that were right up his alley... a particular type of horror scene that no other player would partake in, for its particular level of depravity. Inside the haunted house, all anyone would see would be his costume and mask. No one would know who he actually was. Not even the other players. He would be unidentifiable when he was doing to the guests… what he planned on doing.

And he planned on doing a lot. He _could_ , after all. That's what the waivers were for.

* * *

Back in the makeup trailer, Jasmine clamped a hand over her own mouth. "Jesus Christ, that looks real!"

One of the makeup artists swatted her hand away. "You're going to smear the blood! Don't touch your mouth."

Jasmine couldn't even blink, nor could the rest of the players in the trailer. They all stared slack-jawed at three of their colleagues who had been made up fastidiously to look like the most notorious criminal in this history of the city. In the entire country, really. The lead artist dabbed some glue on the side of one of the Joker player's face. "Try not to move your face too much for about ten minutes so the scars can set." The other two men dressed as the Joker were admiring their reflections in the mirror, impressed with how they had been transformed.

Jasmine leaned over to a player dressed as a psychotic nurse. "Is this legal? I mean, can we get in trouble for having people dressed like the Joker? Isn't it, like, I don't know… insensitive?"

The psychotic nurse shrugged. "I guess it's okay. People want scary. Ain't nothin' much scarier than him."

It had been just about a year since the incident when the Joker had rigged two ferries to detonate. It also had been barely six months since the Joker had escaped from Arkham, his whereabouts completely unknown. The three Joker players had debuted two nights earlier on opening night at Chambers of Doom, but were being kept a secret, their presence even kept quiet from most of the other players, to help perpetuate the shock and the mystery. Each of them had a specific version of the Joker to play, but all guests would interact with one of the three actors, provided they made it far enough into the tour without using the safe word. Management knew that there would be strong reactions from some guests to portraying a very real psychopath, but that was part of the shock value they wanted to capitalize on.

An alarm clock's buzzer went off on the makeup vanity. Showtime. They all had to be ready for a steady stream of guests. Two hundred forty guests per hour, times five hours. Twelve hundred guests a night required a tremendous amount of energy and focus.

Jasmine and the others kept their eyes on the Joker players as they walked out. The striking resemblance to the actual Joker was unnerving.

* * *

Elway watched keenly as the first group of six people entered the building, guided by a player dressed as a witch doctor. He visually counted out three more groups of six ahead of him. Fortunately, Troy and his three friends would be grouped with the couple ahead of them in line. While he wanted as much distance from Troy as possible, concurrently, Elway also was darkly curious to witness first-hand what the players would end up doing to Troy as comeuppance for his insolence with the announcer.

The second group of six entered the building, with some young women in the group screaming even before the doors closed behind them.

"Here you go, sign and date." A harsh-looking woman wearing too much eyeliner and blush handed Elway a pen and a waiver form. Elway scanned the document, which was surprisingly brief in content. No lengthy legalese, just a statement acknowledging that the term "interactive" meant that the players had the right to touch the guests occasionally, but the guests did not have the right to grab or touch the players back. It stated that everyone who entered would have a sticker placed behind their left shoulder that they couldn't remove until after the tour concluded. It stated clearly that invoking the safe word would bring an immediate end to all activity. All warnings that Morris had read to the crowd were included, and the fine print along the bottom stated no refunds were possible after tickets were presented. Elway nervously signed his name and pushed the form back across the table along with his ticket. The woman absently scribbled her name on the "Witness" line, then put it in a basket. She ripped his ticket in half, and returned the stub to him.

Elway kept his eyes on his signed waiver, second-guessing his decision when another waiver was laid on top of his. There was only one signature on it, from the witness. It looked like a smiley face had been drawn where the guest name was required. It was only visible for a second before it was hidden by another waiver form. The crowd advanced forward collectively as the third group of six entered the building.

At the foot of the entry stairs, a female voice piped up. The woman stood five people ahead in line from Elway, in front of Troy. "I changed my mind." She began furiously shaking her head from side to side. "I—I can't do this. I'm sorry, Ben, I just can't."

Her boyfriend silently cursed. "C'mon, don't do this. We came all this way!"

"I'm sorry, but I changed my mind. I'm not going in! I won't!" She darted out of the line for the street.

Her boyfriend tilted his head back, threw his arms up in exasperation, and yelled at the sky, "Are you fucking kidding me?" He reluctantly stepped out of line after her. The woman stationed at the table yelled a reminder after them. "No refunds!" One of the other guests in line offered a condolence to the man was he walked away. The man shook his head, and replied, "Three hours. We drove three hours from Metropolis for this, and then she goes and backs out right at the entrance."

Back up at the Chambers of Doom entrance, there stood an usher dressed like a murderous clown. "Next group of six!" He motioned with his hand for them to step forward.

In horror, Elway processed what the couple's departure meant. The usher counted out loud as he pointed at the next people in line. "One, two, three, four, five, six! You guys are next up, let's go!" Elway and the man behind him were being pulled forward to enter with Troy and his friends.

Morris looked over and shouted at the usher. "Hey!"

The murderous clown answered back. "Yeah?"

Morris smiled darkly. "Make sure THAT group gets treated to extra SPECIAL hospitality!"

Elway's heart stopped. _Group?!_ He felt his stomach start to turn over. _Wait! I didn't do anything! This isn't fair! Are they going to punish all of us for Troy's behavior?_ His protests caught in his throat, as the usher pulled them forward. Elway felt dizzy. He reminded himself that this whole endeavor was for a chance that he'd see Jasmine, and the chance that she'd touch him. _But it's only a chance, not a guarantee,_ he reminded himself. It had seemed like a good idea when he thought of it, albeit pathetically desperate.

Now he felt like he'd made a grave mistake.

The clown usher pressed a sticker with the number "5" onto the back of Elway's left shoulder.

"Why do we need stickers?"

"That's so we can account for everyone coming out. We don't want anyone getting lost or trying to stay inside after the tour ends."

Elway blanched. "Do people get lost in there?"

The usher saw the terror on the young man's face as he stepped forward to enter the building. "Don't worry, kid. Have fun in there. You remember what the safety word is?"

Elway nodded, but he couldn't find his voice.

The tall man behind him answered, speaking directly to the murderous clown usher. "Bitch-ah!" The word was spoken with staccato venom. Both the usher and Elway turned to look at the man's face. It was mostly hidden by the hood of his gray sweatshirt, and his head was tilted downward. Only a hint of a smile was visible above the chin. His hands were tucked into the central torso pocket.

As the clown usher pushed Elway through the door and into Chambers of Doom, he glared at the man in the sweatshirt, affronted by the insinuation that the safe word was directed at him, personally. "You got something against clowns? If you're afraid of clowns, buddy, you're gonna have one hell of a tough time in there." He nodded toward the haunted house.

The man's smile faded, as he raised his face just enough to show the usher his dark eyes behind stringy hair. His voice was so low that it was barely audible above the cacophony of noise from the speakers. "Clowns can be quite… menacing. Can't they?"

The usher had a visceral reaction, feeling the blood drain from his face, though he didn't know what it was precisely about the guest that gave him such a fright: maybe it was the dark eyes that seemed soulless, the pale uneven skin, the scowling mouth or the timbre of the man's voice when he answered. Perhaps it was everything in concert. Whatever it was, something about the man was just… _off._ He didn't reply, instead peeling a sticker of a sheet with the number "6" on it, and applying it to the back of the guest's left shoulder.

The clown usher quickly made eye contact with Morris, as the guest turned to step inside. Morris saw the usher wink at him twice, then flash two sets of digits with his hands. It was a signal: Group Four, Guest Six. Morris nodded, then picked up a walkie talkie. "Heads up in the crow's nest. Group four, number six. Grey sweatshirt with a hood. We've got a problem."

* * *

The crow's nest was the name for the surveillance room where all haunted house activity was monitored via closed circuit cameras. Every group of six guests who entered Chambers of Doom had to pass through twenty rooms, or chambers, assuming none of the participants shouted the safe word. Each chamber was monitored by a single director, who watched from the crow's nest via video. The director communicated through a one-way earpiece to the players in their assigned chamber, to let them know when a new group of guests was entering their vicinity. It allowed the director to notify the players of which guests needed a little extra "attention" in their experience, by referring to the reflective sticker number on each guest's shoulder. It also allowed the director to warn the players of potential issues with unpredictable guests. Each director wore a headset that fed the chamber's audio back to them.

After passing through four chambers together as a sextet, each group of guests would be split up when it was time to go to their fifth chamber, before being reunited on the other side in the sixth chamber. And so it went for the tenth chamber, the fifteenth, and the final twentieth chamber. These four points at which a group was split up were referred to as the "judgment gauntlets", and they packed an extra thrill-punch with a recognizable pop-culture monster. Each judgment gauntlet point branched out into three chambers. All six guests never ended up in the same judgment gauntlet chamber. Which gauntlet chamber a guest was pushed into was completely at the discretion of the director. _How_ they were pushed in was at the discretion of the player.

These judgment gauntlet chambers were what necessitated multiple players dressing as the same character: at the point of the judgment gauntlet, all six guests would experience the same monster, but _how_ the monster interacted with the guests depended on the room they were pushed into. In Chamber A, the guests experienced the most tepid of a frightening encounter, with Chamber B being worse, and C being horrible. What actually happened inside was all a result of whatever the actor improvised. Within reason, that was always the caveat.

The chronology of the gauntlet monsters changed each night. On this night, the first gauntlet monster was Jason Voorhees. The second judgment gauntlet monster that guests would encounter was Leatherface. The third judgment gauntlet monster was Mike Myers. At the end of the tour and the fourth judgment gauntlet, guests would come face to face with one of the three players dressed as Gotham's own Joker. Though not a horror movie icon, he was well enough known to everyone to put one hell of a scare into guests.

As each of the three players portraying a single gauntlet monster was trained to provide a different level of intensity in their performance, management needed to determine which guest got which treatment. To that end, they devised three classifications of guests. However a director classified a guest determined the severity of the judgment gauntlet chamber they went through. The classification was simple: Person, Prick, or Problem.

A "Person" was just a regular, cooperative guest, looking to get some kicks in a haunted house. They usually got to pass through the easiest of the judgment gauntlet rooms. Any cocky or bawdy guests were flagged as "Pricks". Pricks were treated to a host of very unpleasant surprises inside the haunted house. Not the most dangerous, but decidedly awful, to make sure they came out of the experience with a hell of a lot more humility than what they entered with. It was usually boastful young men, or the occasional stuck up young woman, who received the prick treatment. That was the brand of hospitality planned for Troy. They usually went through the middle-level intensity judgment gauntlet chamber.

The final classification required a more serious level of attention. Those guests were classified as "Problems". Every so often, a male guest would arrive who clearly had a chip on his shoulder, out to prove what tough guy he was. That necessitated a more aggressive type of handling inside Chambers of Doom. Problematic male guests were the ones most likely to show up drunk and angry, posing the greatest threat to take the interactive play too seriously, and too far. Problem guests were always sent through the most intense of the four judgment gauntlet experiences. All four actors who portrayed the most intense versions of each monster understood that they could be dealing with a highly unpredictable and potentially dangerous man. As such, all four actors had years of martial arts training, should the "problem" guest try to engage too violently in the fantasy play.

* * *

All activity directors sat up and took note of Morris' warning. _Group four, guest six._

The guests' numbers were identified by the reflective stickers on each person's left shoulder, easily visible to the overhead cameras. The doors to each successive chamber only opened in one direction, and they couldn't be opened again once a group passed through. This prevented guests from doubling back and also allowed for an accurate accounting of which group was where in the building. Each time a chamber's entrance door closed, the counter increased, displaying a number at the bottom of each chamber's main camera.

Group four, guest six. The man in the gray hooded sweatshirt had been flagged as a problem.

* * *

Camouflaged as a regular citizen in street clothes of dark jeans and a gray sweatshirt, the Joker's smile returned as the main door closed behind him. One of his crew had attended two days earlier on opening night, dutifully informing him thereafter that costumed players were impersonating him in Chambers of Doom. The Joker wanted to see it for himself. He had an issue with being imitated. He didn't see it as a sincere form of flattery. He saw it as a mockery.

He didn't like being mocked.

Ominous strobe lights flashed ahead. The five university students in front of him were moving very slowly, cautious to a fault. The Joker cleared his throat. "It's funny, isn't it?"

The lacrosse players exchanged glances, not sure whom the tail end of their group was talking to. Elway didn't know how to respond, so he kept facing forward.

The Joker continued: "Before they let us in here, they made all of us sign waivers." He licked his lips. "For safety purposes, allegedly. Yet none of us… had to go through… a _metal detector_ to enter."

One of the guys yelled back. "So?"

"Sooooooooo… without a metal detector, metal gets in."

Troy yelled back at him. "What are you saying? You think someone brought a gun with them?"

The Joker scanned the surroundings. "I don't know for sure, but I _guess_ it could be possible, right?"

Elway tried to laugh off his apprehension, but instead his voice sounded shaky. "Well, if you brought a gun, please shoot anything that tries to grab me." It didn't sound as much of a joke as he had hoped it would.

"No, _I_ didn't bring a gun." The Joker was telling the truth. He had no concealed firearms on him. He was, however, carrying seven switchblades, a butterfly knife, a hunting knife and a pack of mint-flavored shred-resistant dental floss. "I'm just here to have some fun."

The group inched forward into Chamber One. Gotham's most unhinged psychopath sauntered a few steps behind Elway in the darkened foyer: cloaked in anonymity, hidden in the darkness, and far more dangerous than anything else in the haunted house.

They had identified him as a problem. He wasn't a problem. He was something much worse.

* * *

. . . . . . .

Author's Notes for "No Entry Without Waiver"

. . . . . . .

 _Part 1 of 2. To bring a little levity to this story, there are a few tie-ins to some others already published._

 _When the Joker was pronouncing the "Doom" sign with a burned out "o" as "Dom", it was a nod to "Not Playing with a Full Deck", wherein one of the worst characters in the story is a man named Domenic, who is a sex club dominator, earning him the moniker "Dom dom"._

 _Also from "NPWAFD", Mistress Femke was the head dominatrix who worked at Flesh For Fantasy, owned by Mob boss Vincent Maroni.  
_

 _Another character from "NPWAFD" is the purely loathsome Steven Curtis, one of the Joker's crew who tracks his serial rapes on his own body in a garish tattoo with tally marks._

 _-4ofCups, 2018.10.31_


	2. Part 2

So, I lied. I thought this was going to be a two part-er, but a third is on the way. There's just so much that can go wrong when you go through an interactive haunted house with the Joker in your group.

* * *

 ***** **NO ENTRY WITHOUT WAIVER** *****

 **Part 2**

 **. . . . . . .**

The first chamber looked like a dark gingerbread house. A girl dressed like a child from a storybook lay tied spread eagle on a table, with a witch eating her lower left leg. The player's actual leg was hidden, of course, and a prop leg with exposed bone and torn flesh was in its place. As the group entered, the girl broke free of one her bonds and stretched her hand toward the guests, screaming for help, as the witch cackled and feasted, with screaming noises pumping through speakers. In the background, a boy with charred-black flesh on his arms and face pressed up to the front of an oversized oven's window from the inside, banging his fists to get out.

The chamber's director fed the warning through the earpieces all players were wearing, seeing Group Four enter. "Number six is a problem. Keep away from him." She listened to Morris' update before passing it along. "Number one is a prick. Have at 'im."

The witch looked at the group. "Gretel tastes so delicious!" She exaggerated tearing a bite of flesh out of the leg, then pulled the flesh from her mouth to examine it. She pointed her finger at the group. "I wonder if _you_ taste just as good!"

Two players dressed as witches screamed like banshees as they came out of concealed crannies and ran at the group with forks, poking and prodding them. Each player started looking for the sticker numbers as they crowded the guests in character. One of the witches grabbed Elway and licked his face all over: his cheeks, his mouth, and even the inside corner of his eyes. He yelped in surprise and disgust. "This little boy tastes good!" She poked and prodded the other young men, then went at the Joker, pulling up one of his sweatshirt sleeves and pretending to feed on him. He watched passively, mildly amused at the ham handed acting, allowing his arm to be lightly gnawed at by the player. The player found it odd that the man was wearing close-fitting leather gloves on his hands, while his sweatshirt seemed rather pedestrian and oversized.

The main witch at the table took the flesh she was holding and threw it at the group, striking one of the lacrosse athletes who unsuccessfully tried to dodge it. Another player materialized in the chamber, looked for the reflective sticker with the number one. "See for yourself what Gretel tastes like!" She then pelted Troy with handfuls of cooked cod that felt like warm, wet pieces of skin when they hit his face.

"What the hell?" He recoiled and swatted away at the animal flesh that hit his face and body.

Each chamber had a "closer" player, who was in charge of "closing" a group's experience by ensuring the last person in the group was moved out into the next experience chamber. The closer player who was lightly biting the Joker's arm pretended to work her way up his arm and moved to his back, to see what number was on the sticker he wore.

It was the number six.

 _Oh, crap!_ She immediately started screaming in character, pushing the men toward the exit passage, to make them someone else's issue to deal with. The Joker kept a steady slow gait, despite the pushing and shrieking from behind. Just before he exited the chamber, he yelled over to the witch at the table. "Crank that oven up to 475! He's not baking fast enough!"

As the door closed behind them, Elway furiously wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. None of the players had looked like Jasmine. He supposed that the other men might be turned on by getting licked by a woman, but the thought of it being some random stranger repulsed him.

Troy smelled his hands. "Oh, come on! I smell like fish now!"

One of his friends elbowed him, and referenced a date Troy had been on last night. "So, does it smell like Tanya?"

The four lacrosse players laughed together. Elway remained silent because he found the remark crude and distasteful. The Joker said nothing as he patted two of the knives concealed in his back pocket.

* * *

The second chamber featured prominently a prop that looked like the front fuselage of a WWI airplane, with a man writhing on the floor wearing an old bomber jacket and flight goggles. There was an old fashioned gas mask lying next to him, and he spat white foam from his mouth. Another man dressed as an aviator crouched on his knees, clawing at where his eyes had melted out of their sockets. The Joker nodded appreciatively, impressed with the makeup job. He knew what melted eyes looked like, and it was pretty spot-on. Dirty-looking canisters all over the ground had visible gas and steam rising from them, nestled between mounds of dirt, barbed wire and broken posts resembling a field trench. The man with no eyes screamed, "Chlorine! Mustard gas! Don't breathe it in!"

The chamber director spoke into the earpieces of the players. "Okay, guys. Number one is a prick, number six is a problem."

The sound of an incoming bomb went off loudly, and the lights went out momentarily. The eyeless man warned again. "Don't breathe the gas in!"

Players emerged from hiding, with small steamers emitting a foul-smelling vapor, rushing toward the guests and directing the steam in their faces. Another appeared with a fire extinguisher, and sprayed it on the guests' legs, the sound and feel of which made the younger men yell and huddle together. Elway found himself clutching the back of one of the lacrosse players' jackets for some semblance of stability. The guests were blinded by smoke and gas, while being roughly pushed around, knocking into each other, and stepping on each other's feet. Troy got a face full of vapor from a steamer filled with water and cat feces. He nearly wretched from the putrid stench, not knowing which way to turn to get away from it.

The costumed players' vision was also limited, and they couldn't see the guests' numbers clearly. They weren't sure which guest was Number Six, so they starting punching all of them. Elway could hear the smack of flesh and the guys yelping in pain, and he tensed up, bracing for a blow that thankfully didn't land as he crouched down toward the floor. One player punched the Joker in the shoulder, then landed a few blows to his mid-section. The clown smiled, taking each blow as it came without defense. Knowing that cameras monitored each room, the unmasked clown took advantage of the smokescreen. He quickly caught a player's fist, pulled him forward and threw a punch of his own, hitting the player squarely in the teeth.

"Aw, fuck!" The player stumbled backward, dropping his steamer to the floor with a clatter.

His crow's nest director leaned into the monitor to see what was distressing the player. She saw the player hunched over, holding his face, but she couldn't see much as the smoke machines obscured her view of the room almost as much as what the guests experienced. "What happened?" she spoke into the earpiece.

"He punthed me in the fathe!" The player spoke gingerly, as he checked to see if his front teeth were still intact

The other two players looked at each other in a panic, as they realized that someone in group was hitting back, and hitting back hard. _Get this group out of here, now!_ They started yelling "poisonous gas" with fervor, pushing the group forward into the next chamber, as the assaulted player spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

The director pushed for details. "Did you see who did it? Was it Number Six?"

The player shook his head. "I couldn't thee. I don't know who it wath. It could have been, but I don't know for thure." He winced as he realized one of his front teeth was now on the floor. "Thon of a bith! Thith thucks!"

 _Whoever it was_ , the player thought, _is either a supreme asshole or a psychopath_ _._

* * *

A crackling noise popped and hissed as the group entered the third chamber, which had chain link fences on the walls and a fake window with bars over it. The scene was a kidnapped victim in a chair, bag over his head and arms restrained behind him, while two players dressed as terrorists set off sparks from car battery clamps near him, and sprayed him with water. The captors threatened to cut his head off and electrocute his genitals.

The director of chamber number three didn't like to play by the rules. He liked to provoke whenever he could, so he purposely edited the warning. "Okay, folks, number six is a prick." He was bored and just wanted to see what would happen if the problem guest were intentionally provoked and made angry.

One player dressed as a terrorist jumped forward and grabbed one of Troy's friends, dragging him into the scene, twisting his arm behind him and shoving him into a wall. He wrapped a chain that was hanging from the ceiling around the student's neck, then he pulled out a fake knife that looked real and stuck it right next to the student's groin. "Want to leave here with your balls intact, or not?"

Although he understood it was all an act, the student couldn't help his gut reaction. Holy _fuck!_ "Yes, I do! Let me go! Let go!"

The player reluctantly unwrapped the thick gauge metal chain from his neck, and gave him a face wash with the rough palm of a leather glove covered with motor oil. The student tried futilely to wipe it all from his face using the sleeves of his Gotham University Lacrosse Team jacket.

The interactive players came out of hiding, spraying all men with a hose. Ice-cold water stung their faces and bodies. Another player fired off a cap gun near the guests' heads, to make them think that electrical sparks were nearby, and there was danger they would be shocked in the face. That's when one player withdrew a low-frequency taser, spotted the sticker identifying guest number six, then connected with the Joker's right arm as he pressed the device's button.

The Joker involuntarily jerked as the electricity shot threw him.

The player snickered. "How do you like that, you asshole?"

The Joker shook his head to clear it, laughing low. The five students all looked at him, realizing that he had just been electrocuted. "Holy shit, they can _do_ that to us?" One of the athletes started to panic.

The Joker tipped his head down laterally to his right shoulder, cracking his neck. He turned to face his attacker. "Don't you have a higher setting than that?"

The director smiled and leaned forward as he watched in remote safety. Now things were getting good. "Hit the prick again," he instructed the player with the taser.

Though most of his face was hidden by a bandana, concern was visible in the player's eyes. "Okay," he mumbled reluctantly. He reached forward with the taser. The Joker actually stuck his arm out in compliance, willingly taking the shock again. It staggered him backward, and he stumbled into Elway, who shielded his head with his arms.

The Joker started bouncing up and down. "Whoo hoo hoo hoo! Ha HA! C'mon, gimme a good high voltage fence to grab onto!" He lunged at the player, snatched the taser and zapped the player right in the neck. The player convulsed the dropped to the ground, shrieking.

The director quickly saw why Number Six had been labeled a problem, and he liked the off-script reaction. He was mildly disappointed that he couldn't provoke the guy with the gray hooded sweatshirt a bit more, now that a player was down on the ground. He spoke to the other players who were still on their feet. "Okay, get them out of there. Move!"

The players didn't have to encourage the group to leave. Troy and the other four nearly bolted from the chamber, as nervous about their sixth group member's behavior as they were about the prospect of getting electrocuted. The Joker tossed the taser toward one of the terrorists, who fumbled it to the floor in disbelief at what he'd just witnessed. The clown whistled as he strolled out of the room, pointing a finger gun at the player still stunned on the floor. He pretended to fire.

* * *

The fourth chamber was made up like a giant spider web, with plastic and rubber tarantulas all over the floor and stuck to the walls. A person in the middle of the staging area was cocooned in white string in the center of the web, writhing around as another player, wearing a shoddily-constructed giant spider costume, approached the web to feast on him.

The Joker scrunched up his face in judgment, and heckled the players. "Boooooooo! That spider sucks!" Troy and his friends laughed. Elway had arachnophobia. He did _not_ laugh.

The girl in the spider suit opened up the Pacman-like head and clamped the fangs over the victim's head, pretending to chew it while the victim screamed in terror.

"Spiders don't have mandibles," the Joker admonished, amused at how horrible the outfit was. "Didn't anyone do any research before the costumes were designed? Maybe call an entomologist for some input?" He motioned to the victim's head. "They don't chomp on things like an alligator."

Elway caught his breath as he looked down at the rubber spiders all over the floor. He thought he spotted movement. No, he definitely spotted movement.

A player emerged where all of them could easily see her. She was dressed like she was on a jungle safari. She looked at all men and put a finger up to her lips: "Shhhhhhhhh!" We don't want that mother spider to see us! She has a sac of babies that she will protect if she thinks we are predators!" She pointed to a large white orb that was in the forefront of the staging area. It was beanbag chair around which someone had taped white material. Poorly.

"No one's winning an Oscar for Set Design," the Joker mumbled.

The player in the spider suit turned her body so that all the spider's "eyes" were facing the group, clumsily hitting the cocooned player in the face with one of the legs.

The Joker crossed his arms across his chest and shook his head disapprovingly. "Worst. Arachnid. Acting. Ever."

Elway was watching the floor. There was a lot of movement down by their feet. Scurrying.

The female player in the safari outfit tried to deflect the heckling and get back on script. "Oh no, the spider sees us, and she's mad!"

The Joker cackled as he pointed at the costume. "Mad? Is that why someone glued Groucho Marx eyebrows above the eyes?"

"Quick," the safari woman yelled, "form a line and hold hands! Then the spider will think we're a large snake, and she will be too afraid to eat us!" The five students got in a line facing the spider, holding hands.

The Joker rolled his eyes. "When is the last time any of you saw a spider with eyebrows?"

The safari player was nervous about the dissension, and her voice cracked. "C'mon, everyone! Join hands!"

The Joker relented and took Elway's hand to join the line. He turned his head slightly to call down to the woman at the other end of the row. "Would it help if we hissed? Would _that_ make the spider think we're a snake?"

Elway's palm was wet with perspiration, and he was embarrassed to have someone touch him. The lacrosse player's hand crushed his with nervous energy. Elway was both relieved yet confused at feeling a leather glove on the stranger's hand.

When all guests were lined up, the lights went completely out. Black as pitch, not even an exit sign was illuminated. "Don't let go," the safari woman warned, "and don't move!" A close-weave net silently dropped from the ceiling, hanging like a curtain in front of their faces, which they were blind to. It was coated with rubber cement to make it feel sticky.

The safari woman yelled, "Oh, no! The sac broke and the babies got out!"

With the pull of a lever, the curtain advanced uniformly forward to hit all men in the face at the same time, simulating a giant spider web. A second later, buckets of live cockroaches poured down from the ceiling, raining down upon all the men.

The Joker had caused his share of mayhem and pain in his day, but he had never heard grown men scream as deafeningly as he did in that moment. The students' screams overlapped:

"They're real!"

"Shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck FUCK!"

"I hate spiders!"

"They're moving!"

"They're not plastic!"

"Fuckin' A, get them off me!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

The Joker casually brushed the bugs from his hood and off his shoulders, as he pulled the sticky net from his face. The other young men were thrashing and flailing their arms about, shrieking and stomping their feet before the net eventually retracted back into the ceiling. "They're in my shirt! Shit!" One of Troy's friends untucked his shirt and tried to shake the cockroaches out, still thinking they were spiders. "Get them out! I hate spiders!" When the last one fell to the ground, he straightened up and decided that he couldn't take it anymore. "Bitch! Bitch! Is that the safety word? I give up! I quit! I want OUT of here!"

The dim lights came back on, and a bouncer-sized man dressed as a butcher came into the room, grabbed the young man by the throat, and spit in his face. His friends and Elway gasped in revulsion. The Joker smiled.

"Too much of a pussy to stay in Chambers of Doom, eh?" The butcher kept his hand around the young man's throat, as he pulled him into a recessed part of the room, and into an escape passage that was reserved for the players to utilize, to move between chambers and to escort out the cowards.

As Elway watched the student being pulled out of room, he nearly bolted after him. His earlier regret came roaring back through his mind: _This was a bad idea._ He felt another bug scurry on his arm. He yelped and swatted it to the ground. The three other university students didn't mock him. They were still too busy flailing around themselves.

* * *

A few chambers ahead of their group, a thirty-eight year old female guest was enduring the most traumatizing experience of her life.

"You're safe with me, little girl," the voice above her said.

A distorted music box melody was playing in the room, discordant and piercing. She could see her friends, but they couldn't see her. They were shrieking as players wearing life-sized Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy doll costumes – unclothed – chased them around a room that was decorated to look like a large children's nursery.

The woman had been dragged into an oversized dollhouse, forced down onto her back, her legs apart. The windows of the dollhouse were one-way mirrors. She could see out of the windows, but her friends couldn't see in. They didn't see that she was being sexually assaulted. Not _mock-_ assaulted. Full on, actual sexual assault.

The player held one hand over her mouth, and stuck his other hand down her pants, probing inside her with his fingers. "You can tell me where he touched you, little girl," the man said to her, in character. "Did he touch you here?" He inserted three fingers into her vagina, as he rubbed his erection on her leg. She shrieked, but her muffled screams couldn't be heard over the music box melody. The man continued. "It's okay, little girl, you can tell me where he touched you. You're safe with me. I'm your safe adult. You can trust me."

The woman's eyes clouded with tears, as she stared up at the faceless man. He wore a fencing mask, a convex silver visage that obscured his face, giving him a cipher appearance. She turned her head to the side. "Stop! Bitch! BITCH! I'm using the safe word! You have to STOP!"

He clamped his hand back over her mouth as he freed his erection and positioned himself at her entry. "That's not the safe word, little girl. You have to say the right word, or I won't stop."

She gritted her teeth to bear the horrible pain between her legs as he penetrated her roughly. She tried to scream but she could hardly hear her own voice. "Please stop! Stop! What is the word?" She choked on her own sobs. "Tell me the word and I'll say it!"

Curtis leaned forward so that that the mask was inches away from her face. "The safe word is _MORE."_

* * *

Back at the first judgment gauntlet of Chambers of Doom, the remaining guests of Group Four were pushed out into a foyer, where a man was standing wearing zombie makeup, clad in a judge's robe. When all five men were standing in front of him, four of them visibly shaking, he raised his gavel and brought it down hard on a table. He ordered them to turn around and face the wall. After they turned, the lights went out again. Two large men wearing night vision goggles came out and read the sticker numbers on each man's back, then roughly grabbed them and shoved them forward in the dark. Troy was shoved hard into the second judgment gauntlet chamber, intentionally tripped so that he fell flat on his face in the dark. Elway and the other two students were shoved into the first judgment gauntlet chamber, and the Joker was grabbed by his elbow and dragged into the third chamber. The Joker easily could have fought back when being dragged into his chamber, but he was curious to see what was in store.

White noise machines kept the men from hearing what was happening to each other in adjacent rooms, but each chamber had the same Friday the 13th predatory soundtrack playing overhead:

 _ki ki ki ki ki ki_

 _ma ma ma ma ma ma_

The rooms stayed dark for ten seconds, which felt like an eternity to the students. One of the athletes with Elway asked, "Why did they split us up?"

Simultaneously, three players dressed as Jason Vorhees all entered their assigned chambers as the lights slowly came up. For the next sixty full seconds, Elway and the two lacrosse players were chased around a room with lifelike artificial corpses on the floor and dismembered body parts, while their assigned Jason made grunting noises and swung what appeared to be a hammer at them, intentionally smashing objects nearby to show that the threat was real.

Troy's room had the same general set design, only his assigned version of Jason did more than just chase him. He tackled him and pinned him to the floor, bringing a fake machete down multiple times, striking the floor on either side of Troy's head to make it look like he would cleave his victim's face in half. Troy shrieked in terror, and nearly wet himself on the spot.

In the chamber where the Joker was, the Jason player stepped out of the shadows. The director's voice came through his earpiece. "You get Number Six. This problem is all yours." The player just stared for several seconds, banking on a waxing anticipatory fear rising in the guest. None occurred. The Joker stayed fixed in place, staring back with a sardonic smile on his face. "Is this it? You're just going to stare at me?" He licked his lips. "I don't think I'm getting my money's worth."

The player in the hockey mask shook his head and stepped forward, raising his fake axe.

"Does this…" the Joker fluttered his hands toward the player's activity, "really work on anyone? Or are they as bored as I am? You're about as intimidating as that cardboard spider I just saw."

Jason charged at the Joker, picked him up at the waist and ran with him full bore into a solid wall, slamming him hard. The player released his hold, expecting his victim to tumble to the floor, winded.

He didn't. The Joker landed on his feet. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're a pretty poor method actor."

The chamber director watched his video screen intently from the crow's nest, monitoring the confrontation. He couldn't hear what they were saying, for all the ambient noise.

"So, you think you're a tough guy?" The player dropped his fake axe and lunged at the Joker, grabbing him by the shoulder, jamming a knee into his side and torquing him down to the floor.

The Joker started to laugh. "Since when does Jason Vorhees talk?"

The player checked the Joker's head down to the floor with a heavy forearm across his face. "Every night, there's always one or two of you."

The Joker licked his lips. "I am going to disagree with that." He was face to face with one of the fake corpses on the floor.

"I've seen your type before, jackass."

The Joker wrested an arm free. "No, I don't think you have."

"There's always some guy who likes to think that he's tougher and smarter than everyone else." He flipped the Joker onto his stomach, twisting one of his arms behind him.

The Joker heaved a sigh. "Look… I think you're really going off character, here. This doesn't authentically feel like I'm being attacked by Jason."

"Oh, you want to give me acting lessons now, asshole?"

"Mmm, how about a lesson in situational awareness?" With his free hand, he pulled a switchblade from his pants, and jammed the blade into the man's thigh. As the player screamed in pain and released him, the Joker got to his feet. The chamber director heard the yell, but couldn't see what had happened, because guest number six was standing directly in front of the camera, obscuring the view of the player down on the floor.

The clown bent down and pulled the knife out of the player's thigh. The man yelped again in pain, and the Joker shook his head. "Look, Jason doesn't talk, right? And he doesn't know jiu jitzu, so you need to take that out of your repertoire. The shark in "Jaws" doesn't do dolphin tricks like jumping through hoops and balancing balls on his nose. See where I'm, ah, going with this?" He nodded as if to underscore his own point. "Don't infuse the character with unrealistic skill sets."

The player pulled the hockey mask off of his face, to get a better look at his stab wound.

The Joker examined the blade of his knife casually as he kept talking. "Jason generally prefers sharp objects. Like knives." He held the knife up to the player's face. The player pushed himself backward across the floor, but the Joker didn't pursue him. Instead, he spun around and darted for a corner of the room. He jumped up and latched onto a small camera, tearing it off the wall and slicing cleanly through the wires.

The monitor that the director was watching flipped to visible static. "What happened? Hey! Hey! What's going on in there?"

The player was in too much pain to respond to the question that only he could hear through his earpiece. The knife's blade had gone straight in and down to the bone, chipping it. He clawed his way to standing, trying to balance on his good leg. He brought up his fists defensively, as his assailant advanced.

The Joker kicked the player in the side of the knee of his standing leg, efficiently bringing him down to the floor. Then he jumped in the air, coming down with both his feet on either side of the player's torso, as the man lay on his back. "If you're going to portray Jason, you can't fuck around with acrobatics when you attack someone, m'kay? There is no grace or nuance to that character. Just brutal will, right? So, when you go after the guests who come in here, you've got to go after them like this."

He brought the knife down and stabbed the player in the shoulder, eliciting a high-pitched scream. Troy, Elway and the other two had made it through their gauntlet experiences, and were waiting in a holding foyer. They could hear the screaming, and assumed it was the man in the sweatshirt.

The Joker brought the knife down again in the middle of the player's chest. "Now if _I_ were playing Jason, I'd go for two more strokes: one more stab to the torso…" he brought the knife down into the player's right rib cage, puncturing a lung, "… and then I'd finish off with a slash to the neck." He drew the blade across the man's neck, just under the chin. "That's how I would do it, if it were me."

The clown got to his feet, and secured his knife away. He then dragged a few of the fake corpses from around the room over to the player, and piled them on top of him. "Here. Some friends to keep you company. I'm going to move on to a different part of this dump that may actually be frightening." He easily found the exit door, and strolled out to meet the others. They stared at him, straining to see his face in the dim light. It was still obscured by the hood over his head. The clown sighed. "Soooo… who's still waiting for an actual scare in this place?" He raised his hand. No one else did.

Elway asked him nervously, still trying to see his face under the hood, "Did you run into Jason Vorhees, too?"

"Nope-ah. Just an actor doing a really weak impersonation of him."

The young man pointed at the Joker's chest. "It looks like they ruined your sweatshirt with fake blood."

The Joker looked down at the very real blood spatters. "Uh, yeah. Things got a bit physical."

Troy had a visible scrape on his face. "Did your guy tackle you, too?"

"It was more of a body slam than a tackle." He clapped his hands together emphatically. "What's next?"

A female zombie pushed them into the sixth chamber.

Up in the crow's nest, the director for Chamber 5C tugged on the sleeve of a fellow employee. "Can you go down to 5C and fix the camera? It looks like it was knocked off the wall. I think the earpiece stopped working, too, because the Jason player isn't answering me."

* * *

In the sixth chamber, the room was decorated to look like an abandoned, filthy hospital, in an obstetrics wing. There was a shelving unit in the back of the room displaying numerous large mason jars, filled with prop fetuses suspended in a thick liquid. As the guests were shoved into the chamber, a light came on in the staging area to focus their attention on a female player lying back on a table that had metal stirrups on it, for gynecological exams. The young woman's feet were in the stirrups up in the air, and a paper gown covered her. There was visible mold on the walls, and a tray of bloody surgical instruments was placed prominently forward in the room for the guests to see. Elway's heart caught in his throat: the player on the table was Jasmine.

She writhed around in pain, screaming as a scantily-clad, psychotic nurse entered the room, along with a deranged-looking doctor wearing bloodstained scrubs. Jasmine was made to look like she was pregnant and about to give birth. A light blanket was draped over her bulging stomach, but her legs were naked. She was leaning back on a table that was parallel to all of them, so they saw her in profile. A speaker pumped the sound of crying babies into the room.

"Help me!" she screamed. "Help my baby!" Her fists clawed at the sides of the table, and there was blood on her face and in her mouth. It looked like something was moving where her pregnant belly was, under the blanket.

Elway was dumbstruck. He was both turned on by seeing her bare legs, but horrified at seeing her portraying this character with such exposure. It felt like a horrible violation of her dignity.

A player dressed as a priest entered the room, warning the doctor not to deliver the baby. "It's unholy! Don't let it out!"

The Joker smirked, anticipating a predictable "Alien" movie moment, where some creature would pop out of the belly like a Poptart out of a toaster.

That wasn't what happened.

As Jasmine continued to shriek in character, the nurse yelled, "It's coming! It's coming out!" The doctor grabbed a pair of forceps and a butcher's knife, while looking at the area between her legs, ready to cut it out. The priest warned again. "It's unholy!"

Then, the nurse grabbed the top of the table and rotated it ninety degrees, so that Jasmine was facing the male guests, with her legs far apart in the stirrups. Elway instinctively looked away in embarrassment, while Troy and his two friends grimaced, yet leaned forward, curious to see if her genitals were actually exposed. Elway cautiously looked back, both fascinated and horrified. The Joker furrowed his brow, and leaned forward for a better look. All of them were looking at a naked woman's body from the waist down, full on, at the vagina: the labia, pubic hair and total lower body anatomy was on display under the harsh glare of an overhead lamp, exposed completely with the legs spread wide from the stirrups.

Suddenly, fingers came out of the vagina. Adult-sized fingers. Four of them, curling around the inner labia from the inside outward.

The four male students all cringed and stepped backward. "Christ!" Troy yelled.

Another set of four fingers came out of the vagina, as Jasmine thrashed and screamed. Then, the tips of two thumbs appeared, and the vagina was pulled apart from the inside, enlarging the opening to the size of a grapefruit. The wild eyes of a woman wearing yellow contact lenses appeared in the vaginal opening behind the hands, her eyes darting from side to side rapidly, before locking onto the faces of the male guests.

Elway screamed louder than he ever had in his life.

The woman pulled her eyes away from the inside of the vaginal opening, then pressed her mouth up to the opening, sticking her tongue out and wagging it from side to side as blood dripped from the tongue.

One of Troy's friends clutched onto his arm. "DUDE! What the FUCK?!"

The woman's mouth yelled, "I ate it! I ate the baby!" The tongue circled around, lasciviously licking the prosthetic vaginal lips, before pulling her face away. Then she shot her entire arm clear out of the vagina, all the way up to the shoulder. Clutched in the woman's fist was a dripping mess that looked like an umbilical cord. "I ate the baby! I ate it all!"

Even the Joker stood slack jawed. He raised his eyebrows, and started a slow but pronounced clapping as he assessed the giant prosthetic lower female body half that was custom-built for this stunt. _I guess the money saved on the spider costume helped fund this spectacle._ "Wow. WOW." His rhythmic applause drummed on while the woman's arm swung back and forth from the vaginal opening, still swiping at them. The Joker nodded. "The Cooch of Doom. Well-played."

Additional players dressed as psychotic nurses ran out of their hiding places and encircled the male guests, wrapping them in long chords of actual pig intestines, which looked like umbilical cords.

"Oh, God damn, man." One of the lacrosse players bent over and heaved all of his stomach contents onto the floor. Elway felt sick also. The stench of vomit coupled with the sight of Jasmine lying on her back with a human arm sticking out of what still looked like her actual vagina was too much for him to bear. Overwhelmed, he keeled over also, and threw up.

Troy cringed as he tried to shrug the pig intestines off of his jacket. His friend who threw up wiped the back of his mouth and yelled the safe word at the top of his lungs. "BITCH! I am _done_ with this shit!"

A large man dressed like a medieval executioner came out of a hidden door, walked up to the young man, and slapped him full across the face, before yanking him indelicately back into the obscured passage with him. The psychotic nurses pushed the remaining four men from the room. The Joker looked over his shoulder at the bloody scene. The woman hiding under the table withdrew her arm from the prosthetic vaginal opening, before looking out through it once more in the Joker's direction.

He pointed at her, then back at himself. "Uh, did we ever date, at some point?"

With a hard shove from behind, he was out of the chamber.

* * *

. . . . . . .

Author's Notes for "No Entry Without Waiver"

. . . . . . .

 _Until a few days ago, I always thought the background sound in the "Friday the 13_ _th_ _" movies during foreboding scenes was "chh chh chh chh chh chh haa haa haa haa haa haa". Apparently, that's a common misconception. I found a YouTube video that interviewed the guy who came up with that sound. He said it's actually "ki" and "ma", because he wanted it to sound reminiscent of the first syllables of a drowned boy saying, " **Ki** ll them, **Mo** mmy". _

_-4ofCups, 2018.11.05_


	3. Part 3

The final part to this story. Chamber #8 would give me nightmares for years.

* * *

 ***** **NO ENTRY WITHOUT WAIVER** *****

 **Part 3**

 **. . . . . . .**

In the seventh chamber, the sound of a warbled music box played off-tune, as the four men entered. The room looked like a children's nursery, with oversized stuffed animals and dolls all around. Exaggerated childlike crayon drawings covered the walls, and there was a large dollhouse in the back of the room.

A large, strong man sat in a far corner of the room in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth slowly. He wore khaki pants, a turtleneck and a cardigan sweater. There was a stocking over his head, which was affixed to a fencing mask to cover up his face, rendering him anonymous. "Hello, little boys. I'm glad you came to play with me today." With both hands, Curtis patted the top of his thighs emphatically. "Which of you would like to sit on my lap first?"

Troy and his friend exchanged glances nervously. Elway was confused. He wasn't sure what was going on in this chamber. The Joker, however, knew _exactly_ what was going on in this chamber.

"Are you boys too shy? Well, I can help you overcome that." Curtis stood up from the rocking chair, and slowly walked forward. "Let's play a game together, and then you won't feel so shy." He brought his finger up to where his lips would be behind the fencing mask to shush the guests. "Shhhhhhhh! We're going to play a _secret_ game. Don't tell your parents about it. We're going to explore our bodies together." He dragged over a tripod, with a camera on it. "Let's take some fun pictures to record it."

Troy's teammate looked at him. "What the hell is _this_?"

Troy grimaced. "I think he's supposed to be a child molester." He looked around at the dolls. "And we're the children."

Curtis was smiling behind the mask, thriving on the fear and repulsion on the faces of the three young men he could see, though he couldn't see the face of the man in the hooded sweatshirt. He probed further with another cringe-inducing question. "Why don't you show me where it tickles you? It's okay. I'm your safe grown up. You can tell and show me anything you want. It will be our secret."

Large, unclothed life-sized Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls started to advance on the men, speaking in high-pitched voices.

" _You can touch me!"_

" _Touch me in my special place!"_

" _Touch me where it tickles!"_

The players inside the cloth doll costumes started touching themselves suggestively, and moved closer to try to paw at the groins of the guests. Elway finally realized what was going on, and the shock he was still processing from watching the last scene with Jasmine evolved into a numb repulsion. _We're going to get molested by giant dolls? While a faceless pedophile watches?_ As visually vile as the hospital birth scene had been, it was just gore. This went beyond horror. This was morally repugnant.

The chamber director spoke into Curtis' earpiece. "Number six is the problem. Gray sweatshirt with the hood."

 _Good, I was hoping there would be a problem guest tonight._ Curtis knew that it was very likely that any man he attempted to touch would try to fight him to save face, especially someone identified as a problem. He hoped that would happen, so he could "defend" himself by beating the shit out of someone.

Curtis pointed at the Joker. "You, little boy, why don't you come let me give you a hug, so we can be special friends?" He turned to face him squarely, completely unaware that the man was the criminal psychopath he worked for, disguised as a regular citizen. Curtis held out his hand toward him. "Come here, little boy, I promise I won't bite."

Even from a few feet away, the Joker could smell the faceless man's hand. He had recently had it inside of a woman. Likely, sexually assaulting her right in this room.

"Why don't we go back to the dollhouse, little boy? We can play house. I will play the daddy, and you can play the good little boy." Curtis took another step forward, trying to gauge the reaction of the guest. All he could see was the lower part of his face. He couldn't tell if the man were sneering or smiling wickedly.

The Joker didn't move, as an unspoken dare to the masked man to actually lay a hand on him.

Suddenly, a large Raggedy Andy doll fell backward into Curtis, who nearly toppled over himself. Troy had given the player a forceful shove. "This is _too_ twisted! Who came up with this shit?! If anyone tries to grab my junk again I will fucking rip their head off!"

Curtis looked to his right to watch as the dolls gave Troy his space, but pawed at Troy's friend and Elway. That was when the Joker saw through the nylon over the player's head, glimpsing a very unusual scar underneath the man's left ear. The clown recognized it immediately, because he was the one who actually caused the scar. _Curtisssssss._ The scar looked like a scraggly, backward capital letter "E", which happened when the Joker had intentionally pushed his own henchman's neck into a barbed wire as they were scaling a warehouse property fence weeks earlier.

When Curtis looked back at the Joker, the man whose face was hidden by a sweatshirt hood was holding a knife down at his side. It was hidden from the others, but meant for Curtis to see. The Joker tapped the flat part of the blade against his own thigh repeatedly, making sure that Curtis understood the consequence of trying to touch him. Curtis was disappointed, wanting very much to pummel the guest, but showing up empty-handed at a knife fight never ended well. The Joker was disappointed, too. He relished the idea of carving Curtis up, but this was not the time or the place. The knife was his show that the man needed to back off immediately.

Curtis reluctantly called out to the other players, "That's enough for today, these aren't little boys, they're babies and they need to go home and suck on their mommies' tits. Come back again tomorrow, behave like big boys and I'll give you some candy."

The players dressed as the dolls took the cue, and pushed the four men out of the room. The Joker didn't look back at Curtis, but now he knew were to find him. Curtis had claimed that he and some other henchmen were going to be at the dog track tonight.

If time allowed, he considered circling back later in the evening and introducing Curtis to one of his knives for his insolent lying.

* * *

The eighth chamber was the largest in the entire building. The lights were very low when the men entered, then slowly came up. The first thing they saw was Styrofoam popcorn on the floor, just in front of several large boxes. A plastic arm appeared to be sticking out of one end of an open box. A closed box lying on the floor directly in front of them had a rectangular hole cut out in one side. Lifeless eyes appeared to be watching them from inside the box.

A whispering sound came through the speakers.

 _There they are._

 _There they are._

 _There they are_.

A loud bang shook the room, and the light filter on the spotlights dramatically changed to blood red, coloring the entire room crimson. The brightness intensified just enough to illuminate the rest of the vast area, revealing about two hundred naked mannequins in the chamber with them. The mannequins were lined up shoulder to shoulder, forming a labyrinth, where all mannequins faced inward to serve as the walls of the maze itself. On the far side of the room, a marquee arrow slowly flashed, along with the word, "Exit".

Troy felt the blood drain from his face. "We have to walk through a maze of mannequins to get out of here?

The other lacrosse player blanched. "Holy, _shit!"_ He started shaking his head furiously side-to-side. "No way, man. I don't do dolls. Dolls freak me out. I can't do this, no fuckin' way."

Troy was inclined to agree with his friend. "Yeah, I think I'm with you on this. Fuck this shit."

The Joker spoke to Troy without looking at him. "A lot of people saw Morris taunt you outside in the parking lot. If you bitch out, you'll validate what he called you. A _pussy."_

Troy knew the man was right. He wanted out of this place, but people were already expecting him to fail. _God damn it._ He had to complete the run to save face. "Okay, let's do this. We'll go fast and get it over with."

Troy and his teammate fearfully approached the opening to the maze, with the backs of dozens of mannequins to them, forming the outer border of the labyrinth wall. Without warning, one mannequin's head near the maze entry turned around one hundred eighty degrees to look at all of them. Eight mannequins down, another head slowly pivoted around, the face ending up in their direction as well, watching them.

That was the last straw for Troy's friend. "FUCK, man – I am _done_! Bitch! I'm crying 'bitch', and I don't care who knows it! BITCH! I'm using the safe word! Get me the FUCK out of here!"

A burly guard dressed like a mad scientist came in and gruffly grabbed the university student by the arm. He tripped him purposely, then intentionally dragged him out of the room for maximum humiliation in front of the onlookers.

The chamber director watched the guests from the monitor up in the crow's nest, still unaware of the commotion that had happened in the judgment gauntlet area. "Okay, players. The notes I have say that guest six is a problem. If he's still with the group, you know what to do."

Indeed they did. There were players interspersed with the mannequins throughout the maze.

The Joker sauntered over to Elway, and bent down to whisper in his ear. "It's sort of _unsettling,_ isn't it? I mean, the way it looks like the mannequins are actually… _watching_ us?"

Elway looked straight ahead to the entry of the maze, where five mannequins formed the back of the entrance opening, their faces staring straight ahead toward them. Elway nodded, "Yeah, it's really creepy."

"Mmm hmm. Just… staring and watching us. Sort of how _you_ like to stare from the balcony of the university theater, _Elllllllllwaaaaaaay."_

Elway thought his heart would stop in his chest. He felt a terror he had never felt before. _What did he say? How does he know about that?!_ He was so stunned, that he couldn't move before the man in the hooded sweatshirt moved behind him. The Joker clamped his hands firmly on both of Elway's shoulders from behind, then leaned forward to place his lips right near the young man's ear. "Do you think that _Jasmine_ would find that romantic? Or would she think you're the voyeuristic pervert that you really are? After all, you didn't turn away when you thought it was actually her legs and goodies that were exposed back there."

 _How does he know who I am?! How does he know who Jasmine is?!_ Elway felt exposed and humiliated. His voice shook. "How did you…" He didn't even know how to pose his question. He was utterly terrified, not knowing who this man was, or how the hell he knew what he knew about him. Elway was borderline in hysterics.

The Joker shrugged his shoulders. "That _is_ why you came tonight, right? To see her? Maybe hoping that she'd actually _touch_ you?"

It was as if this unknown man were reading his thoughts. Elway felt nauseous, as the dawning epiphany hit him. _I've been watching Jasmine, and this guy has been watching me?!_

The Joker slapped Elway good-naturedly a few times on the shoulder. "You dirty dog, you."

Down to just three in the group, Troy walked into the maze first, looking back to ensure the other two were going to follow him. Elway was in a stupor of disbelief, so he absently followed Troy into the maze, not wanting to even look at the man who seemed to know too much about him. The Joker brought up the rear, smiling as he looked down at Elway in front of him. All three guests rounded the first turn in the maze. The recorded whispers continued to play from speakers.

 _There they are._

 _There they are._

When they approached the second turn, a player who was disguised as part of the mannequin wall spotted the number six sticker on the guest's shoulder. He nodded to his colleague across from him, and they both pounced. Five mannequins were fixed together in a single unit that functioned like a door at the maze's edge, swinging open to reveal just outside of the maze a seven-foot tall plastic box.

"Put the mannequin back in the box! Ship him back to the factory!" The taunts were sing-song and childlike in tone, pumping through the speakers in the chamber.

The players shoved the man hard into the clear plastic box, slammed it shut behind him and locked it. Then, they ran back into the maze, disappearing and blending ominously into the maze's structure as if nothing had happened.

Troy stared in surprise. The Joker's arms were crossed over his chest, and he tipped his head to the side in amusement. Elway was inside of the box, banging his fists in a frenzy, completely unaware that the Joker had put his number six sticker onto his shoulder. There was a metal chute right above the box. Suddenly, Styrofoam peanuts blasted down the chute and into the container, rapidly filling up the space around Elway up to his knees. Then up to his waist. They kept coming until he was neck deep. More fell, covering his head. All that was visible were his palms on the front inside of the door, which could barely move for all the peanuts that had filled up nearly every square inch. A lid slammed shut on the top of the box, and everything went quiet, save for Elway's muffled screams.

Troy's mouth hung open. "Whoa, what just happened? Can he even breathe in there? What is _wrong_ with this place?!"

For a good ten seconds, nothing happened. Then on a timer, the door to the chamber opened and the packing peanuts spilled out, along with Elway, who had started to involuntarily thrash from a claustrophobia-induced panic attack.

Troy pointed at him. "Is he having a seizure? It looks like he needs an ambulance or something!"

The Joker waved him on. "He'll be fine. I'm a paramedic, I'll take care of him. Go ahead and I'll catch up." Troy watched Elway's body continue to twitch, as the stranger crouched down beside him. The Joker turned his head, so only his mouth was visible in profile. "Uh… I'd _move_ if I were you. Unless you want to get caught in a similar trap by homicidal mannequins."

Troy took the advice and darted through the maze. He could be heard shrieking in terror, as players in disguise popped out and grabbed him in random intervals.

The Joker looked down at Elway. "Well, you're just a mess, aren't you, Elway Pak?"

The young man's fear compounded, as he grappled not only with the residual claustrophobia, but also with the question of how this man knew his last name.

"You want me to help you? Put you out of your misery?" The Joker had many a pointed means to that end.

Elway tried to grab him as terror continued to course through him.

"Okay, then. Shush shush shush, no need to worry. I'll fix it." He pulled out his hunting knife and held it high over Elway's head, making sure the young man could see it.

Elway continued to gasp for air, not understanding what was happening.

The Joker looked down at him. "This is, uh, it's… it's going to _smart_ a bit."

With his left hand, he turned Elway's head roughly to the side, as his right hand brought the knife down swift and hard.

* * *

An employee in the crow's nest leaned in closer to her monitor. She was in charge of outdoor property surveillance. "Um…" she looked around, not sure whom to speak to, "you guys, is anyone here a manager?"

Some of the chamber directors looked her way, while others fed instructions to their respective chamber players. One young woman stretched her arms and yawned. "I don't think anyone's in charge here. Management is all off-site. Why?"

She pointed at the monitor. "Because two police cars just showed up out front with their lights on."

Four directors wheeled over in their chairs to get a closer look at the live video feed. "Did anyone here call the police?"

Another director shrugged. "I don't think so."

"Well, it looks like they're talking to a woman and her friends. It looks… it looks like she's crying, and she's pointing to the building."

One of the directors gasped. "Look! When she turns to the side!" He pointed at the screen. "You see that? She's got a number on her shoulder. It's a gold sticker, too." Each night the numbered stickers had a different color, as a failsafe to prevent guests from attempting to get in for free on successive nights by recycling their stickers. "Gold is _tonight's_ color. That means she went through the house in the last hour!"

The director next to him stiffened in his chair. "And now the police are here? What the hell just happened to her?"

* * *

Outside, the police advanced on Morris and the employees working the admissions desk. Curious guests in line stepped out of the way, but craned their necks to see what was happening. One officer asked the announcer, "Who's in charge here?"

By default, Morris knew responsibility fell to him, as none of the business managers actually were on-site to get their hands dirty. "That would be me."

"We have reports of a sexual assault on the premises."

Morris scoffed. "What? What are you talking about?"

The officer nodded in the direction of a woman who was giving a statement to another policeman. "We have allegations that a female guest was attacked and assaulted inside of this haunted house tonight, by one of the employees."

Morris held up his hands defensively. "Whoa, hold up. All guests sign a waiver before they enter. They _know_ ahead of time that they're going to see shocking scenes, and maybe experience some physical contact by our players."

The officer narrowed his eyes. "Does that physical contact include rape?"

The color visibly drained from the announcer's face. Morris ran a hand over the back of his head, and he closed his eyes in frustration. "God damn it." Having held many jobs in industries that drew transients, he knew all too well how easy it was for some bad elements to get in. He had warned the management board that background checks were worth the extra money when they were hiring everyone. They had unanimously overruled him.

And now they had an alleged rapist in their employ.

* * *

Elway lay out cold on the floor, covered with Styrofoam packing peanuts. The welt on his head was visible, where the Joker had struck him with the butt of the knife's handle. The clown bent over him, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "So, I fixed your seizures." He bent down and screamed in Elway's ear, "You're welcome!"

Elway lay motionless on the ground, but let out a low groan.

"What are you moaning about? You _did_ sign a waiver, so… you get what you get."

The Joker stood up, and secured the knife back in its sheath under his pant leg. Elway would have been quite easy to kill, but it wouldn't have been funny. It was much funnier to let him live as the socially awkward outcast that he was, now that he assuredly would carry the additional baggage of paranoia about being stalked. "Oh," he snapped his fingers, "I almost forgot to tell you something."

He bent over, staring at Elway's open mouth and closed eyes. "Your grandparents run the _best_ convenience store in Gotham. Every visit I've ever paid there has left me _thoroughly_ entertained," he made a smacking sound with his lips, "and I always appreciate the stockpile of raspberry Zingers they keep on the shelves." It was during one of his countless armed robberies of the Korean convenience store that he first spotted Elway huddled in a corner. Out of boredom a few months later, he tailed him to Gotham University and caught him spying silently on a drama class from the theater's balcony. He quickly pieced together who the object of Elway's affection was. The Joker was planning on addressing the "issue" of his image being mocked by visiting Chambers of Doom anyway, but he thought it would be more fun to figure out when Elway would go to see Jasmine, then stick close to him.

"Hey, no hard feelings about the lump on your head." He casually strolled back into the maze, calling out over his shoulder, "Say hi to your grandparents for me, and tell them I'll see them again soon!"

He skipped through the rest of the maze, punching both male and female players squarely in the face when they'd try to jump him in their mannequin disguises. When he exited into the foyer, Troy was standing alone, looking aimless.

"What happened to Elway?"

"Oh, he's going to sleep this one off."

A player dressed like a werewolf ran up to frighten and corral both guests into the next chamber. The Joker elbowed the player in the face, and he went down hard. "You don't need to scare us into the next room. We get it. We know where to go."

The player removed his mask and cried as he cupped his broken nose. Troy looked at the Joker in shock. "Dude, what was _that_ for?"

"For _fun,_ Troy. That was for _funnnn-ah._ That's why I came here tonight, remember?" The Joker raised his face enough to let Troy see his eyes.

Troy instinctively averted his glance.

"What do you say, _Troy,_ shall we take the Chambers of Doom experience up a few notches and _really_ have some laughs?" Without waiting for a reply, The Joker grabbed Troy by the sleeve and pulled him into the next chamber after him.

* * *

A university student dressed as a zombie plumber came tearing around the back of the building, bolting for the front where the police were. He waved his arms as he approached, but the crowd of people didn't part, or even look his way. There had been so many players running through the line, intentionally shocking people, the guests in queue thought he was in character. After considerable shoving through a group of impatient and drunk men, the student finally reached two of the officers, one of whom was interviewing the woman whom Curtis had raped.

"Where's the ambulance?" Zombie Plumber's eyes were wide and visibly registered panic.

One of the officers held up her hands, to preserve the privacy of the woman who was talking to the other officer. "Excuse me, sir, you need to step back."

The student looked incredulous. "Why isn't there an ambulance? He might already be dead!"

Onlookers in line were trying to gauge if this were part of an act, or if there were truth to it.

The officer stepped toward the student. "Is this a joke, or part of your…" she waved at his costume, "your act?"

"No! I'm not making this up! He's actually _dying_ in there! That's why you came, right?"

The lanky policeman interviewing Curtis' rape victim spoke up. "Sir, we were called out here for a different matter. Are you saying a man inside is hurt?"

"Yes! Jesus, that's what I've been saying! It looks like he was stabbed several times!"

Both officers snapped to attention, and stepped away from the female victim they had been interviewing. The female officer lowered her voice. "The woman behind us called 911 because she alleged that she was attacked inside the building. That's why we're here."

Tears brimmed in the student's eyes. "Then no one's called for an _ambulance_ yet? My boyfriend was stabbed by some psychotic asshole who went through the tour as a guest!"

The officers exchanged glances, as their minds raced over the allegation that there were two dangerous people at large inside.

* * *

The ninth chamber was decorated like an Egyptian archaeological dig, with coffins and players dressed up as mummies, with a female player dressed as an archaeologist. The Joker burst through the door, a handful of Troy's jacket bunched up tight in his hand. Their appearance was the cue for the players to begin their act. One of the male mummies started to pull the archaeologist into a sarcophagus with him, touching her lewdly as she screamed.

The Joker glanced over apathetically. "Where's the door?"

One of the players jumped up and ran to the exit door to block them. The players had been instructed to control the speed of each group's passage, so the groups didn't overlap and bottleneck. A woman dressed as a mummy tried apologizing. "I'm sorry, but we can't allow you to go—"

The Joker reached his free hand out and gave the woman a hard shove to the side, tumbling her to the ground. He found the door handle in the dim light, and yanked it open as the players yelled obscenities at him for his rudeness.

When the door closed behind them in the next foyer, Troy wrested his arm free and tried to double back to go back into the mummy chamber. To his dismay, he discovered the house's insurances that no one went backward: there was no door handle. He was in a panic. "Let me out of here!"

The Joker was on him quickly. "Oh, come on, now! You just need to loosen up and have a little fun!"

They had reached the second gauntlet section, and another zombie judge stepped forward with a gavel, to determine which of the three chambers each man would be sent to. Before he could start his spiel, the Joker grabbed Troy's arm again and pulled him forward into the middle chamber. The judge tried to protest, but both men went inside before he and the chamber ushers could stop him.

The judge immediately recognized the severity of the issue. He rushed into the left-side gauntlet chamber, where the player dressed like Leatherface had martial arts training. "Hey, we've got a problem! Two men just ran into Chamber B."

Inside the second chamber, props looking like human skin hung from meat hooks suspended in the ceiling. Another player dressed like Leatherface charged at the Joker and Troy with a fake chainsaw that sounded very real. He caught up to Troy first, and placed the chainsaw along his leg. Troy shrieked from the vibrations and tripped, falling backward onto the floor, out of the Joker's grip. Leatherface turned his attention to the Joker, who had already opened a Stiletto switchblade. The player ran at him and the Joker swiftly brought up the knife under the man's chin before letting go of the handle. The knife remained wedged in place in the man's jaw, skewering the tongue from the bottom up.

The player shrieked in agony and clawed at his face, when the second Leatherface player entered the chamber through a side door. He saw one guest down on the floor in a sportsman's jacket, and his colleague was down on his knees, mask off and blood seeping from his mouth. He looked at the man in the gray hooded sweatshirt and pointed. "Okay, buddy, you and me. Right now. Let's go!" He took off his mask, pulled his sleeves back, and started pacing the room with his arms wide. "Let's _go,_ motherfucker! You think you're a tough guy now? I'm gonna wipe the fl—"

He was silenced by the knife that was thrown directly into his chest, piercing his heart. In stunned silence, he looked at the knife, and back again at the man who had thrown it. He was in shock both mentally and physically, and slowly backed up against of the chamber walls before sliding down the back of it to the floor. He kept his eyes on the face of the man who had thrown his weapon. The last thing he saw was a maniacal grin before his awareness receded and darkness enfolded him.

"Jesus, man! Why did you do that?" Troy scrambled to his feet and against a wall to put distance between himself and the psychopath.

The Joker felt along the exit door for a handle. "I'm getting impatient, Troy, _that's_ why." He located the handle and opened the door, motioning back to Troy. "C'mon, we're leaving."

Troy shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere with you, you freak!"

The Joker pointed to Leatherface who bled from his mouth. "You want to end up like him?"

Troy shook his head furiously. "No! No I don't. C'mon, man. Please don't hurt me!"

The clown growled. "If you don't want to end up like him, then you're coming with me until I _say_ you can go. Got it?"

The student nervously stepped forward, flinching as the clown grabbed his jacket's arm, and pulled him along into the next room.

* * *

"You don't understand," Zombie Plumber told the officers. "My boyfriend has spent years studying marital arts. Whoever stabbed him has got to be a maniac!"

The male officer brought the microphone from his shoulder up to his mouth immediately. "This is Officer Trejo. Code 11-42, at the corner of Constitution and 42nd, at Chambers of Doom haunted house."

The female officer pressed for more information. "Can you tell us where this happened? What room was it in?"

"Yeah, it was in chamber 5C. I'll take you there."

She looked at her partner. "We need to shut this place down and get everyone out. And we need back up."

The female officer jogged behind the student, who led her to a side door. Her hand rested on her gun's holster. The other officer walked briskly to his colleagues who were questioning Morris. "I've requested back up and an ambulance. Officer Drew just went inside."

The larger officer stepped away from the announcer to speak directly to his colleague. "She's pursuing the suspected rapist?"

"No, she's checking on a worker who was allegedly stabbed inside."

"Are you saying we have _both_ an alleged rapist _and_ a lunatic with a knife?" The larger policemen held up his hands as he advanced on the crowd. "Okay, folks, I need everyone to get back!" He turned to Morris. "No one else goes in, got it?"

Morris nodded, then yelled over to the murderous clown usher. "Shut it down! No one else gets in!"

The disappointed group about to enter Chambers of Doom reluctantly stepped out of line, as the usher pulled a chair up in front of the doors and planted himself squarely in it with his arms crossed over his chest. One of the policemen approached him. "Did you see any guest tonight who looked suspicious?"

The clown usher scoffed. "In this area of Gotham? Who _doesn't_ look suspicious?"

* * *

When the Joker and Troy entered the next chamber, they had caught up to the group in front of them. The group was down to four guests, one of whom had been pulled into the macabre scene by the players. The room was set up to look like a shady vaudeville stage, and the guest had ropes around his wrists that disappeared up into the ceiling. He screamed to be let go, as players on a catwalk above pulled on the ropes to make his arms flail around like a marionette. On the stage were players wearing grotesque paper mache masks, making them look like ventriloquist dummies.

A player dressed like a white magician's rabbit stepped out of a cranny to stop them. "I'm sorry but only one group at a time can be in a chamber."

The Joker whipped out another switchblade and aimed it at the player's face. "You're going to take me out of here, now."

The rabbit jumped back. "Whoa! Seriously?"

The Joker flipped the knife with his wrist. "Take me to the room where the Joker is."

The other guests were huddled together on the far side of the chamber, unsure if what they were seeing was part of the script or not.

The rabbit player held up his paws in placation. "Okay, okay, we'll go. You don't need to hurt anyone."

The Joker licked his lips. "That depends on how fast you can get us there."

The player wasn't about to be a hero. He nodded and motioned for the Joker and Troy to follow him into the emergency exit door, as he flipped the rabbit head back, letting it dangle behind him, still attached at the shoulders. "Which Joker did you want to see? We have three."

* * *

The central corridor ran like a spine down the building, connecting all the rooms for the players to go through. Inside the narrow corridor, a director was notifying the players that the police had arrived. Whispers of the police presence quickly trickled down the hall. One of the players who heard it worked in the nursery chamber. She lurked in the room's cranny until the current group of guests scurried out, to get away from Curtis in his child molester guise.

After the group left, she came forward to tell her colleagues the news. "Hey, you guys, I just heard that the police are here."

One giant naked Raggedy Andy took off his costume's head. "What? I can barely hear a fuckin' thing with this on my head."

"I said the police are here."

Curtis heard the word "police" and jumped up from the rocking chair he was sitting on. He ripped off the cardigan sweater he wore, then nearly knocked two players down as he bolted for the corridor passage. Once inside, he took the fencing mask off and quickly made his way toward the back of the building to make his exit, keeping his head down and his face turned toward a wall.

His brisk pace quickly caught him up to the rabbit player, the Joker and Troy. He pushed past them indelicately, in his panic to leave before being caught. The Joker spotted the scar again on Curtis' neck, and he smiled darkly as he watched his henchman rush down the corridor. The Joker had also heard the warnings of the police's arrival, so it was clear that Curtis was fleeing to avoid landing back in prison. The Joker's intention to address Curtis later would have to be put on hold. _Another time, Curtis. Your days are numbered._ The police's presence also meant the Joker had to be swift in his purpose. He would have to deal with the insolent mockery of his image efficiently… but effectively.

The rabbit player leading the Joker and Troy spoke over his shoulder. "We're almost there. Which Joker did you want to see?"

"Oh, I'll let you choose. I'm feeling lucky tonight."

* * *

The player brought them to Chamber 20A, where the relatively "mild" version of the Joker was waiting. The rabbit player opened the door for them, and the Joker yanked Troy hard, pushing him into the room before him. The clown spun on the rabbit player, and issued a threat: "Now, listen up, Bugs. You're going to get those _other_ two Joker actors in here in the next minute, or I'm going to kill the guy wearing the Joker costume in _this_ room. Got it?"

The rabbit player nodded emphatically, then bolted for the nearest chamber.

The Joker strode into the room, letting the door close behind him. He pulled the sweatshirt off and tossed it to the ground, revealing a long-sleeved black crew neck shirt underneath. His face was finally visible, but it was still hard to see details in the dark room with a strobe light flashing overhead. His telltale facial scars were barely detectable, and the mop of stringy hair hid his face when he moved.

He started bouncing on the balls of his feet like a fighter, as he scanned the room and took in the props of fake dynamite, plastic knives and an arsenal of fake guns on the wall. When the Joker player stepped forward wearing the full regalia that the criminal was known for, the Joker paused, taking in how the makeup artist had tried to approximate his own scars.

The Joker sneered at the actor. "Soooooo, who are you supposed to be?" He swung his arms to loosen the joints and get them warmed up.

The actor went into character. "If you don't know what I've done to Gotham or what I'm capable for, then you are in for quite—"

"Wrong." The Joker shook his head, as he issued his reprimand in a low, even tone. "That's not how the Joker speaks."

Troy looked at him. "Dude, why are you doing this?"

Keeping his eyes on the actor, the Joker pointed his finger at Troy. "Take off your jacket. _Now._ It's time to play."

Confused, Troy removed his jacket and let it drop to the floor. The player in the Joker costume was also caught off guard, uncertain what these guests were expecting in their experience. Most guests recoiled when they saw him dressed as the most hated criminal in the city's history, but the man bouncing up and down seemed very much like he wanted to engage him. The player mimicked the Joker's laugh, based on what he had seen in videos released by the actual clown a year earlier when he terrorized Gotham in a bid to get the Batman to unmask himself. He pulled out a plastic switchblade and aimed it at the actual Joker.

The Joker pulled out a very _real_ switchblade, and aimed it back at him.

The player stiffened when he saw the knife. "Whoa, whoa! Hold on, this is just for fun, okay?"

The Joker tipped his head down to his left shoulder to crack his neck. "Oh, I agree. This _definitely_ is for fun." He pointed his knife at the player. "Your coat – it's wrong. The gloves, wrong. The pants, wrong. The shoes—" he wrinkled up his nose. "Are those a pair of Nikes?"

The player looked down at his own feet in embarrassment. "Uh, yeah."

The Joker rolled his eyes and shook his head. "The shirt, wrong. The hair, wrong…"

Troy shrugged. "He looks pretty real to me."

The Joker spat at him. "It's _wrong!_ All of it! Even the lighting in this _room_ is wrong. Strobe lights? Really? Because the Joker is known for his attacks at techno night clubs?" He shook his head and looked back at the actor. "Convince me that you're the Joker. C'mon, get into character, I want to see how you—I mean _he—_ would threaten someone."

"Um... okay." He held up a knife with a shaky hand. He hadn't been coached on how to handle combative guests, as no one in management – despite the ill-advised decision to approve a Joker judgment gauntlet chamber at all – ever thought that the guests would have any reaction other than fear and aversion.

The Joker spoke to Troy, pointing at the sweatshirt he had just removed. "Put on that sweatshirt."

Troy visibly cringed at the suggestion. "Why would I—"

"You're going to play a character, too. You're going to play a dumb jock." The Joker smirked. "That means you're going to have to dig _deep,_ Troy, to get into that headspace."

Troy hesitated, the sarcasm of the remark finding its target. He grimaced as he looked at the discarded sweatshirt on the floor, stained with God knew whose blood on the front.

Troy wasn't moving fast enough and the psychopath's patience was wearing thin. He bellowed in rage: "Put it _on!"_

Troy whimpered as he reached for the garment. Out of panic, he had trouble finding the area to stick his head through after he pulled the gray sweatshirt over his shoulders. When he finally found his way through to the right fit, he brushed the hood down to his shoulders, revealing a static-induced head of hair that was standing in all directions.

The Joker corrected him. "No. Pull the hood back up- _ah_!" It was a shame that the hood needed to cover Troy's head, because the Joker liked how the standing-on-end headful of hair made the college athlete look like a frightened cartoon character.

As Troy swept staticky hair under the cloth of the hood, he exchanged apprehensive glances with the Joker player. The actor spoke up, hoping to get his director's intervention. "Jessica? Are you seeing this?"

* * *

Up in the crow's nest, the director for Chamber 20A wasn't watching her monitor, because no group of guests was supposed to be that far along in Chambers of Doom yet. Jessica's back was to the screen and her headset was removed, as she and her colleagues speculated about the reason for the police's presence. She had no idea that the most notorious criminal in a city of thirty million people was in the very room she was supposed to be watching.

* * *

The Joker closed the switchblade and put it back in a pocket. With his other hand, he pointed at the other two men in the chamber. "Now, show me. Show me how _the Joker_ would threaten some hapless college kid leaving the gym, who happened to be strolling along at night in the wrong place at the wrong time. And…" he pointed at both of them, "action!"

The actor swallowed nervously, trying to get back into character, squaring himself to Troy. "And where do you think that you're going?" he asked, in his best attempt at imitating the Joker. He scrambled around behind Troy and grabbed him roughly, bringing the fake knife up to his neck. Troy made no effort to pretend to fight. He stood in a stupor, trying to process what was happening.

The Joker's eyes darkened and he scowled. "And now what?"

The player tightened his grip around Troy. "You're going to give me your wallet!"

The clown's arms fell to his sides. "A mugging? You think the Joker goes around mugging people?"

Another Joker actor came into the room. "What the hell is going on here?"

The Joker looked at him. "A horrible imitation, that's what." He reached in his back pocket and pulled out something that was too small for anyone to see. "I need your help for a demonstration, m'kay?" He lunged at this new Joker player, punched him in the face to stun him, then spun him around. Standing uncomfortably close to the player from behind, he brought something up around the front of the man's body. Keeping his eyes locked on the player in the Joker costume behind Troy, he said, "See, I think that the Joker would probably handle himself more like _this."_

He had pulled out the shred-resistant mint-flavored dental floss and ripped off a long piece, and wrapped the ends around both of his gloved hands, as a makeshift garrote. He pulled the floss tightly across the actor's neck. There was no intention to strangle him. Just to cut him. With a swift yank backward, the material functioned as a blade and sliced through the player's neck and windpipe. The clown whispered into the player's ear, "Death by dental flosssssssssss." The Joker roughly released him. The player coughed and sputtered blood, as he grabbed his neck and dropped to the floor. Both Troy and the actor behind him stared in mute shock, as the actor bled profusely from his extensive neck wound.

The Joker twirled the blood-covered string around. "Listen to your dentist, boys. Oral hygiene is a serious matter," he smiled, baring his yellow stained teeth. "Never forget to floss."

The third Joker player entered the room. Stunned by the unexpected sight of his colleague bleeding out on the floor, he never saw the Joker coming. The clown anticipated another aggressive actor like the Jason Vorhees character he had attacked earlier, so he had had a knife ready. He threw it at the actor, piercing his shoulder. The player let out a shrill scream.

The Joker ran at him and tackled him to the floor, flipping him over onto his back and pinning him down by sitting on his chest. The clown pushed and poked at the artificial scars glued onto the actor's face, before ripping both of them clean off. The player was cursing and screaming from his knife wound, eyes wide with unalloyed terror. The Joker turned back toward the player standing behind Troy, holding up the prosthetic scars, letting them dangle from his fingers. "And these? These, uh, these _scars_ that all of you are wearing? They're wrong, and the worst part of your costumes!"

He looked down at the player underneath him, pulling the knife from his shoulder. "Here, let me show you what they _really_ should look like."

The player saw the knife approach his face, and he tried to buck his assailant off, as he yelped in terror.

The Joker attempted to calm the man down. "Ut tut tut tut tut tut. Trust me, what I'm seeing in this room is far more painful to me than this will be to you."

"No! Get off me! _Stop!_ "

The clown leaned over his face. "Oh, come on now, you're breaking character again. I think the real Joker would be laughing right now." He cackled to confirm his assertion. "Why aren't you laughing? I'll help you smile."

With that, he plunged the knife deep into the man's mouth, drawing the blade back and through the tender skin of the cheek, carving a Chelsea grin on one side. Both Troy and the actor behind him screamed in unison, along with the actor who was in excruciating agony. The Joker gave the man a matching cut on the other side, resulting in two flaps of skin on the sides of the mouth. The Joker rolled off of him to let the man thrash in shock an agony, clutching his face as blood seeped through his fingers. Shock and the loss of blood ebbed the man's screams, and the Joker pulled out his butterfly knife. He opened it with a twist of the wrist. "Let's give you another smile, shall we?" He drew the blade across the man's neck, from one corner of his jaw to the other, creating a garish semicircle of red that quickly bled profusely. "Acting," the Joker said to the dying man, "can really be a cutthroat business in this town, can't it?"

He cackled at his own bad joke, then used the knife to cut off part of the player's shirt where it had come untucked. He stuffed it inside one of his gloves, as the man on the floor slowly died.

The clown sprang to his feet, turning to Troy and the player behind him. "Ta daaaaa!" He used jazz hands to punctuate the accomplishment. "That's what _I_ would do if _I_ were the Joker. _Your_ Joker," he pointed at the player behind Troy, "is just awful. F Minus, that's how I grade your performance. Very disappointing. If I had a head of rotten lettuce to hurl at you, I would. But," he patted the pockets of his pants, "I forgot to bring one. Although, truth be told," the Joker looked up at the corner of the ceiling and nodded, "I probably would have pelted that cardboard spider with it first."

He picked up Troy's jacket off the floor, and slipped it on. He scratched his head as he looked around. "Now… where's the exit?"

The player behind Troy pointed in stunned silence at an obscured doorway to the outside of the building. The Joker nodded, reaching into his pocket. "A little parting gift for you. If you're going to portray the Joker, you need a _real_ knife." He opened the blade to show its authenticity. "Here, take it." He tossed it to the player behind Troy.

The player dropped his artificial knife to the ground with a clatter, and gingerly caught the open switchblade with both hands.

"And Troy, for being such a good sport and playing along, you get a parting gift, too." The clown reached down and hiked up his pant leg, removing the hunting knife from its sheath. He handed it to Troy, who looked at it mutely. There was blood on it. "It will help defend you against horribly acted Jokers in haunted houses."

Troy slowly turned the knife back and forth. The strobe light overhead threw shards of reflective glare all over the room.

"Gentlemen, I'm going to ask one last favor. Let's close out this scene with a bit of drama. I don't feel I got my money's worth out of this chamber experience, so throw me a bone, m'kay? Each of you face each other, and hold the knives like you're about to attack one another. "

Troy stiffened up. "No. There's no way I'm gonna—"

"No," the Joker corrected, "I don't want you to _actually_ attack each other. Just pose like you're _pretending_ to."

Both men exchanged glances. One of the other Joker players had met a horrific end with a sliced up face, and the other was dying in agony on the floor behind them. They realized they had no choice but to comply, so they reluctantly posed in a threatening manner toward each other.

The clown walked to the exit and placed a hand on the door handle.

"Good. Very dramatic. Now, I'm going to step out that door, but I'm going to pop back in here in 30 seconds. Don't move. If both of you are holding these poses when I get back, you both get to live, okay? Count to thirty, starting now!"

With that, the clown opened the door, strolled out the back of the building and into the parking lot. He had no intentions of going back in. There was no need for him to. Having overhead the warning in the corridor that the police had arrived was all he needed to know. He knew their playbook. Gotham's finest would tie up those last two loose ends for him.

He casually strolled away, blending seamlessly into the crowd that was still waiting to get inside.

* * *

Backup police squads arrived on the scene, and a team of four went in the front, being led down the central corridor by the rabbit player who had sprinted for help after rounding up all the Joker players in the Joker judgment gauntlet. Approaching the back of the building down the central corridor, the rabbit player explained to the police again how he had been forced against his will to comply with the violent guest. "He had a knife and he made me take him back to this room." The police had their guns drawn. Just outside Chamber 20A, they assumed their positions for the raid. The team lead looked at the student in the rabbit costume. "I need you to step back and cover your head. You said he was wearing a sweatshirt?"

"Yeah, a gray sweatshirt with a hood."

The officer spoke low to his team. "On my count. One. Two. Three."

They kicked the door in and stormed the room with their guns drawn. Both the Joker player and Troy turned to face the police in stunned surprise, their respective knives poised threateningly in the air, with two bodies on the floor. One of the officers had a visceral reaction at seeing the player dressed as the Joker. He had been one of several officers who had been restrained and blindfolded by the Joker and his men, in their attempt to murder Mayor Garcia during his commemorative speech honoring their murdered head of police, Commissioner Loeb. Instinctively, he pulled the trigger and put a bullet in the head of the actor.

Troy screamed in horror at the sound of the gun blast, and he ran toward the policemen for what he thought was refuge. He wasn't thinking about the hunting knife clutched tightly in his own hand, or that he was dressed like the assailant the police were hunting. Six bullets rang out in rapid succession, and Troy was dead before he hit the floor.

* * *

Three city blocks away, a van with its lights off rolled toward a man wearing a university jacket. The side door slid back, and the Joker jumped in, throwing himself down casually on the middle bench seat.

"All good, boss?" Mooney asked.

The Joker felt the scars on his face from the inside of his mouth, swiping the tip of his tongue along their rugged surface. "Not good, Mooney, but better."

"You take care of things in there tonight?"

The Joker pulled out the material swath he had cut from the player's shirt, a tangible reminder of the brash insolence of turning him into a character in a haunted house. He looked forward, beyond Mooney, staring out the front windshield at nothing in particular in the distance. "I think I made my poin _t_. I'll tell you one thing, Mooney."

Mooney's knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. "What's that, boss?"

The Joker ran a hand absently through his hair, before stretching both arms out along the full length of the seat back. "No one in Gotham will dare mock me again."

* * *

. . . . . . .

Author's Notes for "No Entry Without Waiver"

. . . . . . .

 _This story was inspired in part by a conversation I had with someone who went to an interactive haunted house in Orange County, CA where guests were electrocuted, slapped, and victimized by a "child molester". The idea was so horrifying to me, that I had to get it out of my system. My friend Jimmy is a strongly-built six-foot-three inch man, but the actor playing the child molester wasn't deterred by his size. The guy came right up to Jimmy, grabbed him and full-on licked his face. Incredibly creepy, to say the least. Chamber number seven was the one that was inspired by my friend's story, but the rest of the chambers are situations that would bother me, if I encountered them._

 _In my story "Dear Joker", in Question #20 Part 1 & Part 2, the Joker confesses that one of his favorite pastimes is to raid a Korean-owned convenience store in Gotham. He does so to stock up on his raspberry Zingers, but he also loves the chaos that ensues when the entire family is terrorized and tries to fight him off. Elway is the tie-in to that story.  
_

 _The loathsome serial rapist Curtis escapes in this story, but when "Not Playing with a Full Deck" starts up two weeks later, he soon gets his due comeuppance._

 _The henchman who picks up the Joker at the end of the story is Mooney. He is the very first character mentioned in my story "NPWAFD", wherein he tells a new recruit of how violent the Joker can become if he perceives that he's been disrespected._

 _The irony of this story's close, for anyone who has read "NPWAFD", is that the entire story ("NPWAFD") is predicated on the Joker reacting to what he perceives to be a mass mocking of his image. It didn't come from Gotham, however. It came from Metropolis, where they had no idea the depth of his capacity for vengeance and mayhem._

 _Thank you for reading!_

 _-4ofCups, 2018.11.09_


End file.
